Private Worms of the Earth

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

Darth Solipsis

It is not clear to me that you still exist. I've entrusted this letter to a messenger who is capable of delivering to anyone, alive or dead, but you and I both know there are deeper annihilations than simple death.

To the best of my recollection, we have never met. I retired to my end state of choice around the time your work began in earnest. Consider me an appreciative spectator.

If you'd be willing to meet with me, perhaps on the Field of Blades, I have a conversation in mind.

Ashin Varanin
Captain of the Pomojema

 

[Darth Solipsis]

DARK LORD OF THE SITH | VOICE OF THE MAW
Field of Blades
Realm of Chaos

​

In the desolate Field of Blades, Darth Solipsis, the spectral remnant of the once-proclaimed Sith'ari by the masses during the events of the Second Great Hyperspace War, stood in silent recollection awaiting the arrival of his summoner. The air crackled with an otherworldly energy, intensified by the pulsating glow of his willed corporeal form which was cloaked in the shadow of the past. The soul-winds of the chaotic maelstrom that was Chaos, whispered tales of ancient battles, the blades, remnants of shattered memory, jutted from the ground like a macabre garden.

As the distant horizon faded into hues of crimson and violet, Darth Solipsis turned, his eyes gleaming with a cold, ethereal fire. "You have called..," he intoned, his voice an echo, a shell of what once was.

Pulled from the deepest abyss from which he had been cast by the Jedi at the advent horizon of Tython's fate, the Dark Lord had fought the spectral tide of the lowest reaches of netherworld to reach here. A space so violent that the very idea of self was so easily torn to shreds in the gnawing void.

The visitor, whether there or not yet within the specter's ominous presence, would hear him.

".. and I have come."



Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

The Field of Blades was, to Ashin's mind, the nearest the Netherworld came to making sense. She'd visited here on occasion while planning her wife's rescue from less hospitable climes, and summoned Ijaat Mereel 's soul from the Field not so long ago.

This place had meaning aplenty, resonance...and annoyance.

A spectral duel wisped past her; half-corporeal swords flickered carelessly through her armorweave and bit at her skin. Pain of a specific kind staggered her. She lashed out with a red-gloved backhand to drive the duellists along, and along they went. The half-real injury stung her, but she put it aside. In a place like this, recognizing a wound as real could have terrible consequences. She denied it that recognition.

As Darth Solipsis ' presence became clearer to her, Ashin centered herself and moved to approach.

"Lord Solipsis," she said with a nod of the appropriate slowness and depth to signal recognition between peers, but not a hint of deference. "I'm Ashin Varanin. My prophets tell me your...residence in the Netherworld is somewhat deeper and less rationally constructed than the Field, so I appreciate you going to the trouble." A little dry understatement there. "From time to time, my ritual circle and I have recalled to life — or a reasonable equivalent — certain people whose renewed existence would benefit me. Yours would. This is an offer without obligation or expectation, free and clear."

 

[Darth Solipsis]

DARK LORD OF THE SITH | VOICE OF THE MAW
Field of Blades
Realm of Chaos

"I know you. Empress."​

The spectral winds caught his robes, whipping his black cloak in the wake of his still silhouette as he too, neared in a slow, steady approach that mirrored Ashin's own.

"Who can forget when the once Empress of the Sith took to the fringes of the galaxy with her beloved. And the wake they wrought with them."

The Dark Lord came to a halt nearly within arm's reach of his host.

"In that time.. I was blind.. deaf to the great galactic truth. Caught in the creed of Jedi dogma, blindsided by the attack on Coruscant like any other when the One Sith came. Merely a man."

He paused.

"The truth became evident much later. The Great Error revealed."

The Sith'ari leaned in, gleaming. His vile grin on full display. He began a query with his tone deep.

"I held the galaxy by the throat. Faced against the combined strength of every major power from the Outer Rim to the Deep Core.. every Order.. every Nation.. and the summoned aid of all those Jedi who came before.. My shrines, my artifacts, my very name was cursed and striken from record."

It was clear he meant not to boast or see himself set against her. He was curious and immediately his gaze came to that of excitement by the intrigue of it.

"What does my resurgence benefit to you? What is it, one as powerful and as wise, truly desire by unleashing me?"




Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

"Oh, I'll do far more than unleash you, Lord Solipsis. I'll equip you. Call it a seed investment: a dozen eager and seasoned Sith marauders with no particular loyalty to me; funds enough to provide for the mundanities; reasonable access to good alchemists; odds and ends as appropriate. None of this would put you under my aegis: I'm not looking for a weapon or a lieutenant, not that you would ever fill such a role. Merely offering you a foothold to...save you some time."

A battle was forming between spectres not far away. Ashin clasped her hands behind her back and watched the fight.

"Lest you think me cagey, a few of the ways your resurrection would make my life easier. First: yours would be one of the most difficult resurrections my ritual circle has managed. It would be a useful challenge for them.

"Second: I have reliable information that the current leadership has a major plan that will run counter to my interests. Nothing distracts like an unpredictable potential rival...with a proven taste for undermining the complacent.

"Third: there are interesting private consequences if I become known as the one who brought you back.

"And fourth: punctuated by the usual navel-gazing internecine butchery, the Sith institution has been essentially at peace with the universe for twenty-eight years. I ask you," Ashin said, mock-horrified, "what kind of world am I leaving for my grandchildren?"



Darth Solipsis

 

[Darth Solipsis]

DARK LORD OF THE SITH | VOICE OF THE MAW
Field of Blades
Realm of Chaos

"The Sith institution died with Mori."​

The Dark Lord said with an audible hiss, it was of no surprise how much of a disdain the Sith'ari held for the galaxy's "Sith". The very same remnants that he and his New Sith Order had driven into hiding, hunting them, and defeating them in the Sith Schism after taking in the Warlords of the Sith. When the Brotherhood descended upon Felucia, Thule, Mustafar, and Rhand, the Empire's Sith met the ferocity of the New Sith and their more "Banite" thinking.

Only the Strong.

Their ilk had made excellent trophies, cast in ritualized stone and sent to Exegol where they had adorned his walls within the Citadel of the Sith before it's final demise. Each battle between his order and theirs had effectively weeded out the weak from the galaxy, halting the dilution of the Dark Side's potency.

"We preached how the Bogan was like a venom, spread out and diluted it is harmless.. but concentrated..."

His hand motioned in gesture.

"..it's fatal. These Sith know nothing of the Dark Side, they know only obedience. They know only subservience. They do not test their masters, they do not KILL to claim the mantle of their predecessors."

The Dark Lord closed his hand into a tight fist and shook his head.

"Twenty eight years? Twenty eight years of weakness, apathy, and waste. Twenty eight years of unchecked Alliance dogma."

The Sith'ari locked gaze with Ashin's own, his burning embers lit anew.

"Twenty eight years in Hell."




"Very well."




Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

Twenty-eight bittersweet years for Ashin. On the one hand, she'd felt a frustration and contempt of her own, in more than one direction. But on the other, she'd spent that time achieving the one thing she wanted most, at every cost, and that was the core of the Sith way to her. Lumiya's form of the Sith philosophy had always rung truest.

Darth Solipsis ' acceptance sparked a grin beneath Ashin's mask. "So be it. As I couldn't assume your presence on the Field would be sustainable, my circle is standing ready."

And would, in certain circumstances, have tried this with or without Solipsis' consent. But that could be left unsaid.

Ashin cocked an ear as, far away but very close, a hammer rang on rock: a precipice of ore on a raggedy slope a thousand miles tall. An even dozen of Ashin's people stood around a vast stretch of stone. A man of early middle age lay there unconscious: a Sith taken in battle, mind erased for use in rituals like this, and otherwise in perfect condition without qualification or trick. A new body for Solipsis.

The ritualists and the vessel all wore breath masks. Even this far down the slope, halfway between the shattered surface and the ever-churning core, Exegol didn't have much of an atmosphere these days.

"Onward, then," said Ashin, and vanished from the Netherworld to take her accustomed place in the circle.

That hammer rang a slow rhythm on the naked ore of the slope. Instead of the usual driving rhythm, Ashin had instructed the hammer's holder - the master alchemist Azel Moran - to add an atonal element and a little arrhythmia. A note of chaos, you might say.

Ashin joined the other dozen in reaching out to the Force, drawing on the profound wound that Exegol's destruction had left behind. A planet's destruction always led to such things, a side effect of the cataclysmic breach in the natural order. Exegol's strength was qualitatively different now, and possibly greater, than it had been when Solipsis ruled it.

The view of the ritual site was similarly unique. The ruined atmosphere barely veiled a sky full of rubble. And down the other way, at the heart of the greatest rent, more rubble swirled and ground against itself where Exegol's core used to be. Even just standing here was a uniquely worthwhile experience, the ritual aside.

As the hammer gonged, the ritual circle reached out to draw Solipsis into his new body.

 

[Darth Solipsis]

DARK LORD OF THE SITH | VOICE OF THE MAW
Realm of Chaos

"Your circle?"​

The Dark Lord queried, caught momentarily off guard but quickly able to place the pieces together. They were ready, now. The former Empress and her flock would not make waste of this opportunity.

He would not speak as Ashin announced her withdrawal from the Field of Blades, returning to her followers to take place in the circle as the ritual began in earnest. A burning sensation began welling up within him, he slowly moment by moment felt as if he was being pulled in several directions. Like a breath of wind his spectral form whisked in the breeze, yet he was anchored here, 'claimed' by the void that tugged back at him.

The Field of Blades began to fade from his eyesight, the Sith'ari 's view replaced by that of razor winds and fathomless depths. The empyrean void. He remembered this place, the maddening vortex from which he had plummeted, the unforgivable maw by which the spirits of the Jedi had cast him into. Tython had been his death, but it would not be his end.

Nay.

The Dark Lord roared, unwilling to let his identity become swallowed up and chewed out in the tug of war match between Ashin and Chaos. Memories flooded his mind, visions of his past, and images of what could be. He denied it all, accepting only what was. His eminent revival.

As he remained defiant against the threat of the gnawing void ready to consume him, the chaos in his mind stopped, replaced by deadened silence within a red hued emptiness. There at last an image came. A familiar figure that approached him, Jem Fossk .

"Daughter."

He stiffened his stature and paused, facing the array of disgust from his own blood. The very blood that betrayed him to the Jedi.

And everything went black.​

Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

The stones of Exegol shivered at Darth Solipsis ' cultured, growling basso. The ritual reached its crescendo — and collapsed. Frustration blazed up in Ashin's heart.

"Where is he?"

Lord Moran left off his chaotic rhythm and shouldered his hammer, the same long-handled implement Rave Merrill had used as keeper of the Dark Forge of Aza'zoth. "Too far for my call to reach," Moran said. "Down in the planet, or back to the abyss, or somewhere else in the Underworld — somewhere relatively shallow, like the Field of Blades. Do we go again?"

They'd drilled for this, and done it in earnest: they'd snared lost, conflicted, or outright unwilling spirits and forced them into bodies with a reasonable rate of success. Some of those situations had turned out better than others.

"No," Ashin said at last. "Leave the body on the rock with an IV. On the off chance Lord Solipsis reaches our side an hour after we leave, or a day, or a week, the body is his to claim. This wasn't the time. Get the prophets on the line."

 

[Darth Solipsis]

DARK LORD OF THE SITH | VOICE OF THE MAW
Exegol

And then there was light.
​

A vessel. What started as near corpse-like stillness slowly unraveled into creeping movement. A finger, a twitch, the slightest movement such as a blink or a breath.. but they were HIS own.

The journey from Hell was.. unpleasant, but a small price to pay. He could still see their faces, the Jedi, those one with the Force that would keep him bound for all eternity. Even as he opened what were now 'his' eyes, he saw things no mortal should see, that is until his vision adjusted. His senses fully awakening in the vestage that now carried his dark spirit.

Equipped with a breath mask and an IV, he awoke utterly disorientated on the wreckage of his former Throne World.

Exegol.

Destroyed. The Citadel no doubt at its epicenter. He knew not if his summoners had come nor gone, the haze still triumphant as his senses came to.





Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

The prophets had earned ample bonuses, as professionals tended to do in that line of work. When Darth Solipsis drew his first breath, Ashin stood there alone. The circle had gone elsewhere — for their safety.

So: Ashin and Solipsis on an outcropping of bare ore, partway down a slope that had been pure mantle until the planet cracked like an egg. Scraps of atmosphere and what had been the surface drifted down the long slope toward the gnarled, swirling rubble that had been the core.

An old Lords of the Fringe Sekairo-class stealth transport sat nearby; Ashin's own vehicle was somewhere else. She gestured at the transport with her red-gloved left hand. "Yours, with the keys to the resources we discussed. My people included reasonably complete dossiers on the notables of the day, such as they are. And maps of what is claimed — for fairly broad definitions of 'claim' — and what's not."

 

[Darth Solipsis]

DARK LORD OF THE SITH | VOICE OF THE MAW
Exegol

This body was not his own.
​

The first moments in the new body were a cacophony of sensations — the cool embrace of smooth skin, the rhythmic thud of a young heart, and the power coursing through veins reanimated by the Dark Side. The air crackled with residue energy from his malevolent spirit as it interwove with the sinews and flesh of his host, operating his organs like a puppet. The room seemed to exhale as the vessel's eyes flickered open, revealing the piercing yellow gaze that had once commanded the Brotherhood of the Maw.

The Dark Lord rose from the cold, bare ore upon which the host body had been prepared, his movements a macabre ballet of precision and grace. He flexed fingers that had never known infancy, marveling at the newfound life coursing through him. Solipsis regarded his new form with a twisted satisfaction, a vessel selected for the sole purpose of perpetuating his haunting existence. But could this form sustain him? Or like so many before crumble under the weight of the Dark Side?

"Claims?"

The Sith Master approached and surveyed the spacecraft set aside from him as he listened to his peer prepare him. Mentally he was already orchestrating the manner in which he would make his grand return, but knew it would take time to restore much of his power and strength.

"Irrelevant."

The Sith'ari hissed.

"Show me where THEY have set themselves and I will give you what you ask. You have lived up to your promise, I will abide by mine."

Solipsis grinned.

"The Great Error will be corrected.. again."





Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

Privately, Ashin liked to think of resurrections like this as unguided missiles. She'd launched more than her share. Some misfired; some fell short, or failed to get their bearings in unfamiliar territory, or simply failed to do appreciable damage. But when this kind of ploy paid off, the consequences had often verged on spectacular.

Within reason, she felt optimistic this time around. Instinct suggested that today — not that daytime existed on broken Exegol in any meaningful way — was an inflection point.

"I have no doubt of it, Lord Solipsis," she said, and turned and left. If not for the breath mask and the gravitas of the occasion, she might have walked off whistling. Her mood was just that good.