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  1. In Memory of LAJ_FETT: Please share your remembrances and condolences HERE

Star Wars New Sith Trials I *Voted Best RPG Summer 2016*

Discussion in 'Role Playing Forum' started by Darth_wanderguard, Jan 24, 2016.

  1. DarthIshyZ

    DarthIshyZ Chosen One star 8

    Registered:
    Jan 8, 2005
    IC: Aryan Graul, Jwob Sebb, Kronos and Radian T'LenitySon's Tower and surrounding area

    Aryan knew, even as the shuttle continued its steady climb for the Tower's pinnacle, that they were likely making a terrible mistake by returning to the heart of the battle; he was surely a glutton for punishment to have agreed to Jwob's demands so effortlessly. In fact, part of what ailed him involved the Ithorian's combat abilities and whether he actually possessed the kind of prowess needed to effectively protect him in the Jedi's absence. It had seemed reassuring at the time, but now, as they drew closer, he was beginning to have his doubts.

    And it certainly did not help his mood any to know that they were continually being tested...

    Their next challenge came in the form of an amorphous wave of black energy that burst forth from the edges of the Tower's veranda. The shockwave hit the nose of the shuttle head-on, causing the small craft to careen dangerously to the right before Aryan was able to wrangle it back under control. In the aftermath, he realized that he might have scraped a wing-tip against the side of the stone tower, but who was keeping score? At any rate, it wasn't all that important compared to the various starfighters that were now...falling out of the sky...?

    A series of curses were quick to fly from Aryan's mouth, many of which were unfitting for someone in his position, as he clenched the control yoke in a white-knuckled grip. His first instinct was to blame the Ithorian... until he realized that the ships that were being propelled in their direction from the energy wave were in fact all that remained of the craft that they had used to escape the Chimaera; the Sith had been stranded.

    Immediately, Aryan began to contemplate the implications of what that meant. Despite the ferocity of the air around them, an arrogant smile briefly marred his features; they were essentially at his mercy.

    "There they are," he finally announced as he managed to traverse the field of ships to arrive atop the platform. As he took stock of the situation, he decided that it certainly did not look good for them; there appeared to be more Sith bodies on the ground than still standing.

    But was that necessarily a bad thing? He knew he still had to secure his own legacy, but...

    Licking his lips, he turned to look sideways at Jwob. "For our sake, I hope you have some kind of plan. I'm not--"

    His commentary was cut short by a flash of lightning that lit up the cockpit in a sea of red, the brilliant display seeming to emanate from the fingertips of one of the Abeloth avatars. Aryan gaped at the sight, but made no move to disengage himself from the shuttle, even as the statically charged wave zeroed in on its prey – a lone figure standing prone against Abeloth's wrath.

    Even if the cultists had withdrew back, the four Abeloth avatars were still at large, and they had pushed their assault on the group further and further. The Wookiee continued his defense against one of the avatars, as did a strange Sith, although very powerful.

    The giant Reptilian had charged the fourth Abeloth avatar, but the attack was quickly rebutted, sending him flying across the room. In a rash response, Insipid had lunged through the room, weapons ready, trying to attack the fourth avatar, which could possibly turn for the worst. The always growing Abeloth was tremendous in her sheer power, and if she was able to kill Insipid, they would surely have it in for them.

    Out of the corner of his eye, Kronos noticed Esmerelda sneaking alongside the edge of the room, presumably to get to the reptilian for medical aid. He almost wanted to help her, keep her safe - or at least give her a blaster to defend herself with.

    But that would be yet another aside. He wouldn't have the time to notice the condition of Insipid, or help Esme. An Abeloth avatar had chosen him as her next target, as she rhetorically asked him to step forward to die.

    He would not have any proper time to react. She had immediately sprung out her tentacles, shooting powerful red lighting in multiple directions, including right where he stood. He raised his lightsaber, to absorb the blows, but it was of no use. The bolts already hit him square in the chest, knocking backwards several feet.

    For the moments after, his nervous system would scream with pain, as if needles were pinned through his skin in every spot imaginable. Yet he couldn't scream - he couldn't even move. It was as if the blast disabled him completely.

    The pain was unbearable.

    He didn't even know if anyone, especially Esme, saw it happen.

    "KRONOS!" Jwob exclaimed. He knew he needed to get down there, but... did the falling ships mean that this was the last airworthy ship left? "Aryan, yes, well, the beginnings of one. Touch and go down there so I can help Darth Kronos, please, but keep this ship safe." He pulled his lightsaber out and made sure he had his blaster handy. He got up and made for the ship's hatch. As the Chancellor got to a safe level for him to jump, he did so, landing nearby his fellow Sith.

    He'd been knocked down and could be dead, so Jwob ignited his saber and ran over to him. He seemed to be breathing, so he tried to shake him. "Kronos... Darth Kronos! Wake up, damn you!" He also kept his eyes out for the being that sent the lightning at him.

    Jwob saw Kronos girlfriend moving around the outside of the room. She must not have seen what happened to him. Jwob used the healing technique on Kronos, as well. He was obviously still alive.

    There was such a battle going on it was impossible to know who was winning. Ships were destroyed, including the blastboat here. Bodies of cultists and Sith alike all over. Death hung in the air. And here was Jwob trying to revive Kronos. But after he carried Jwob on the Moraband battlefield, he had to return the favor.

    Jwob saw Aryan fly away from the tower. Not to keep the ship safe, to go somewhere. He didn't sense any deception, well none other than what most politicians are capable of. "Where the kriff does he think he's going? He'd better be back here or his time as Chancellor will set a record for short terms!"



    Aryan and Radian

    Aryan felt relatively helpless as the Ithorian went aft to disembark from the shuttle. Again, he had been left to his own devices, completely unaware as to the details of Jwob's 'plan' and seemingly at the very mercy of whatever outcome the Sith fashioned for themselves. That was not necessarily a bad thing, per say, especially since it removed him from t he worst of the fighting – if he wished to get his hands dirty, he had people he could hire to accomplish that need for him. No, the problem rested with his own waning confidence towards this whole situation. The Sith were losing, which meant it was time to reevaluate his options.

    Fortunately, he didn't need to think too hard; the answer came to him in the form of a separate transmission that crackled to life over the comm.
    "Please tell me someone is alive out there," the weary voice sounded with a hint of desperation. With all of the interference in the area, it took

    Aryan a moment to place the voice as belonging to the Jedi.

    So, he wasn't dead yet. That was...beneficial.

    "You Sith aren't the kind to surrender, so I figure either the battle's still going on, or everyone is dead." There was a long pause. "I never thought I'd say this, but I hope it's the former..."

    His lip curled up into a half smile at the admission. Could this be an 'out'?

    He reached for the comm. "Master Jedi, I'm thrilled to hear that you are not dead. It appears that we both have been rather fortunate in that regard." He hesitated as his gaze rested sparingly upon the area of Abeloth's lightening attack. "Although, I have to admit, I'm not sure how much longer that will last..."

    Where was Jwob?

    Clenching his jaw, he made his decision and began to arc the shuttle away from the platform, back towards the open space around the Tower and away from the others...

    "What's your location, Radian?" he projected with some urgency. "I'm making my way from the Tower now, you should see the shuttle."
    Radian hadn't looked back since he began his walk so it was hard to judge the distance he had a tough time determining how far he had come. It seemed to him, however, that no matter how far he came the tower was never any closer. Whether it was his head wound, or Mortis he did not know.

    But after a short time he felt his communicator begin to buzz slightly, and he grabbed it off his belt. The little cylinder was emitting a strange static noise he couldn't understand. He patted it with his right hand unsure of what else to do, and the static began to form words."bz... tzz... been rather fortunate... shzzz..." The voice seemed familiar but he couldn't place it. "Hello Hello?" he tried to respond to no avail. "...ezz... What's your location, Radian?" "Graul? Aryan Graul is that you? I'm..." Radian took a quick scan of his surroundings unsure of exactly what to say. "Well I think I'm a few meters off what is suppose to be the eastern edge of the tower. Kark its hard to tell directions out here, just trace my signal!" He continued shacking the little comn unite doing his best to maintain the signal.

    From what he could gather from the garbled response, the Jedi almost sounded surprised to discover that he had survived. Aryan took some pride in that fact, but he did not want to get too presumptuous, especially when they still had a lot of ground to cover. Mortis remained a mystery to him, and he did not want to take anything for granted. At least, until they were far, far away from here...

    As if in response to that last thought, the signal, while weak, flickered to life on the console. "Alright, got the signal," he announced more for his own benefit than for Radian's.

    Aryan did not hesitate as he adjusted his course and brought the shuttle around to the projected location. As he approached and dialed down his speed, he noted that he was not all that far away from Jwob's original crash site. How ironic.

    Brushing that coincidence aside, he opened the comm once more, hoping the man could hear him. Well, if not, he would certainly be able to see him by this point. "Coming around now," he stated the obvious, his brow furrowed with concentration as he brought the shuttle low. With a flip of a switch, he lowered the ramp. "Let's make this a quick transfer, shall we?"

    "Not to worry, I wasn't planning on staying on this rock any longer than I had too." Radian grunted as he leapt aboard the ship.
    He was thankful to no longer be alone, but he knew he wasn't safe.
    There were most likely still Sith out there, and he had no idea where his Jedi taskforce was. Plus Graul wasn't loyal to anyone but himself, that much he had no doubt of. The only reason the human had came for him must have been because he expected Radian to be of more use alive.

    And the Jedi was fine with that.

    Because he still had use for Aryan too.

    "Whats going on?" Radian shouted as he worked his way to the cockpit. "Where is everyone? How is the battle going? What are our casualties?"

    "Not good," he muttered grimly as the Jedi came bounding into the cockpit with a plethora of questions. And rightly so, it had been nothing but pandemonium out there since they had arrived; a little confusion was to be expected.

    But despite the urgency of the situation, it was curious to note that Aryan did not immediately take off. Instead, he draped an arm across the adjacent chair and turned to regard Radian carefully. "The Emperor appears to be dead," he stated simply.

    Those words should have brought elation, but instead, it felt as if someone had kicked him in the gut. What was it about the man that provoked him in this way? It was exasperating! Still, he was able to maintain his stony demeanor as he continued in a calm voice. "In fact, from what I could gather, only a handful of Sith remain. I left a few back there to fight, but they're on the cusp of defeat.

    He paused for a moment, his expression darkening.

    "Now, I seem to recall mentioning something about waiting for the...right opportunity...?" He trailed off, quirking a brow suggestively. He hoped the Jedi would catch on to his line of thinking. "It's practically knocking down our door, Radian."

    Radian took this information in stride. There were numerous factors to account for. Was he sad the Emperor was dead? Not by a parsec. Was he happy? He wouldn't quiet go that far. In fact he wasn't even sure whether to believe this information. He wouldn't be the first Sith Emperor to "die" and come back. And he probably wouldn't be the last.

    However for practical purposes he considered the possibility. What of it? If he was dead that meant two things, two very contradictory things. First it meant a major foe of the Jedi order was gone, and under normal circumstances this would be the ideal time to attack the Sith. Second however; he also couldn't deny they were in deep poodoo now. Whatever was strong enough to kill someone so powerful would see the rest of them as little more than pests to be squashed. And that was not something to be happy about.

    What was it again? His head still pounded as he contemplated these possibilities and attempted to consider their options.
    He shrugged his shoulders, unsure of what to say.

    Then his head cleared for a moment, and he had to fight hard to avoid panic.
    "Abeloth?"
    He whispered the question dryly.
    It had to be, no other single creature could have killed the Emperor.
    And before anyone could answer the obvious he spoke again.
    "We need to get out of here, NOW."

    Aryan's gaze remained firm as the Jedi gave the order. He had been anticipating this moment for so long, and now that it was finally upon him, it almost seemed surreal. Could he commit? For the sake of the galaxy, he knew it had to be the right decision; the Emperor was dead – at least, as far as he could tell – and someone needed to carry the mantle forward.

    Without uttering a word, Aryan nodded his head in acceptance and turned back to the controls, but as he tightened his grip on the yoke, he hesitated. Something along the ground glinted in the distance, catching his eye and drawing a curious stare. It was difficult to make out from their current vantage point, but it almost appeared to be some kind of cyborg monstrosity; tufts of hair were clearly visible sticking out of cracks within its mechanized exoskeleton.

    "Wait...do you see that?" he asked with a hint of amusement. As the shuttle started to climb in altitude and offered a clearer view, Aryan noted that the mess of metal and hair was starting to take shape into a sentient being. "Is that one of ours?" He narrowed his eyes as he thought for a moment. "The Wookiee, isn't it?"

    He frowned as he found himself approaching the area of his own free will, a clear sign that perhaps the idea of leaving it all behind was not nearly as favorable to him as he initially thought. "One last stop, Master Jedi, I promise."



    Jwob and Kronos

    He had not noticed that he had been sent out the room Blade Squadron was in, and out into the hangar ledge of the Son's Tower.

    In the next moment, Kronos had noticed Jwob the Ithorian above him, shaking him for any sign of life, even going to the point of screaming at him. Which wasn't necessary. Even if he was in total shock, small, noticeable breaths were apparent.

    After a while, which in his mind felt like an eternity, the pain began to subside, and movement slowly started to regain itself in his muscles. Jwob's faces were directly in front of him.

    He let out a soft grunt. The pain was still there - subsided, but it remained. It was going to be a handicap going back into the battle. Still, it would probably be a sign to Jwob that he was fine - or as okay as one could be after suffering from a wound like that.

    He tried to stand up, limbs shaking as he did so. He would stumble slightly, bones and muscles still sore from the blast. But his muscles could not carry him. Whatever was in that blast it continued to cripple him.

    He couldn't get up.

    From above, Kronos was able to notice a ship flying back; the only working ship to be seen, in fact. It looked like the blastboat he was in fell over after the crash.

    Perhaps it would be best if the flyer of this craft waited outside. Without them, they would be stranded on this hellhole forever.

    That was the last thing he wanted.

    It was a nightmare all through this battle. The Sith were completely overmatched here. The Emperor was apparently dead. If it was just the cultists, the Sith would mow through them faster than you could blink. But, there were multiple undying Abeloths were here. "We need to leave," Jwob thought.

    Jwob was hopeful when he saw Darth Kronos get up. Even more so when he saw the ship come back. He readied himself to get back on the ship.

    Then Kronos started walking towards the room where the fighting was happening. "Where are you going? I hope you're getting people to evacuate. We need to get out of here NOW!"

    Jwob moved in front of Kronos. As slowly as he was shuffling that wasn't hard, even for an Ithorian. He searched Kronos eyes for any sign of getting out. All he saw was pain from. From the shock? No. Then he remembered Esmerelda.

    He put a hand on Kronos shoulder. "I'll get her and any others I can round up. Get back to the ship."

    Kronos was able to get himself up, however. The Ithorian had some weird-ass healing technique that quickened the process by a large margin - which he was thankful for.

    He felt a hand touch him on the shoulder, trying to pull him back from going into the chaos. The hand belonged to Jwob - and he was urging him to get back into the ship and leave.

    Under normal circumstances, he might have agreed. After all, these Sith meant nothing to Kronos. In fact, he disliked most of them, thought them to be untrustworthy, especially their Emperor. While he was indeed powerful, and an asset to this mission, there was an equal chance of a sudden betrayal from him - or anyone that he wanted to associate with.

    But Esmerelda was in there with them. She was the only one who could keep him there with everyone. Perhaps it was an intentional catch set up the the Triumvirate themselves to keep him right where he should be, instead of running away from the battle. He wouldn't put it past them.

    Then there was the fact that he did not trust Jwob well enough to keep her safe - mainly thinking he wouldn't try hard enough. Or, worse, that he would simply fail.

    He responded with one simple word: "No."

    He pushed aside from Jwob and set forth back into the battle arena. Which could either be a good decision, aiding in their victory-

    -or a bad decision, leading to his untimely death.

    Only time would tell.

    Tags: Sinrebirth, ConservativeJedi321, Darth Kronos, HanSolo29, WookieeRage
     
  2. WookieeRage

    WookieeRage Force Ghost star 5

    Registered:
    Feb 3, 2016
    IC: Darth Ravenous
    Son's Tower, Falling...

    He snapped out of the Dreamscape which was unfortunate... He was hoping to not have to deal with the consequences of his jump from the ledge. He was falling back first looking at some cultists that were closing in freefall fast. Seemed like they wanted to make sure the deed was done personally and not leave it to Mortis' Rocky terrain. The first one collided hard against Ravenous' chest causing both to tumble erratically through the air. The cultist smacked against an outcropping and left mushy bits pasted upon Ravenous' Exo-suit. He kept tumbling in freefall and he could see another cultist closing with each passing flip. This time, as the Cultist closed in, aimed again for the chest of the Wookiee, Ravenous grappled him in a full guard. He turned the position around on the Cultist. Now on top, the Wookiee unleashed a flurry of mechanical augmented punches, completely smashing the cultist's head into a pulp. He used the cultist's body as a sort of glider and guided the body into another outcropping. The landing was not graceful and there was not much of a landing area; at least, not for a person to stand on. The impact crunched and folded the Cultist backwards, Ravenous used his suit to grasp onto the outcropping, his hand digging into the Duracrete, he discarded the body into the winds. Now he was fighting just to hang on. He could fall, and hit the emergency function on his suit, which would lock up his limbs and fill the suit with a gel, but that would take hours to scrub from his fur. Plus, it was a prototype feature and he would not risk it. Hopefully someone would come across him. A few more cultists screamed as they passed him, Falling to their death. He reached out through the force, trying to reach anyone who would hear. Light Side, Dark Side... It didn't matter at this point... It didn't matter anymore.
    Tag: HanSolo29, ConservativeJedi321, Sinrebirth
     
  3. Sinrebirth

    Sinrebirth Mod-Emperor of the EUC, Lit, RPF and SWC star 10 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Nov 15, 2004
    IC: Mnngal-Mnngal - Mitth combo!
    Between Places

    Fixation.

    Obsession.

    Hunger.

    For a moment; that paused. The millennia long desire curved around... Curiosity?

    A mechanism, in its graveyard of minds of minds of minds? Mnngal-Mnngal rolled on it.

    Are you... Real?

    Liquid flowed around the mind.

    The creature considered. It had never considered inanimate objects. They were not interesting... But he could feel the Force. Not just the dead stolen echoes of the Force, driving the water mad and not allowing the flow to be still.

    Antagonising.

    Tell me.


    The head of the vegetable tilted to a side, listening. It could hear the questions even as they were posed in his mind to its mind. It turned them over. A reply, but not an answer. Or was it? Truly a curiosity was something that sparked possibilities, and possibilities created opportunities. The holocron shifted it's mental weight for a moment. Considering.

    "[If to exist even if only in thought is to be real, then I am. Yet the questions still remain.]" it echoed back through borrowed lips. A thin divide but a needed one in such an exchange.

    A retort.

    A flowing consideration.

    But not an answer. The Force is with you. You blur the line between inert and ert. How?

    The waters grew still.

    It needed to know.

    This interaction froze all those animated or reanimated by Mnngal-Mnngal. It held them firm, so it could have but one impression, even cutting off Abeloth, not that she encouraged two way discourse - it was all her way and no other way; rot or not.

    The head tilted back, as though to ponder for a moment before looking back down at the slicked blade in it's hands. With that brief glance it realized many had paused in the fight. Ceased to combat. Just stood stock still as they let the world pass them by. Yet still it did not have an answer. No reasoning, no reasons. Just being. Just asking. Just seeking.

    How long since Mnngal-Mnngal had last spoken to another? A year? A month? A day? A breathing moment. To it.

    "[We both evade. Moving about each others questions. Neither answering. Both questing.]" A grin played at the puppets mouth. "[Shall we try at both answering? For rots sake and answers sake tell me and I shall tell you.]"

    Answers.

    The water took shape. A man. A face. Tattoos. Yellow eyes. Nose cut out. Skin of charcoal that rippled like ooze.

    Answers.

    It's head lolled.

    Truths flow from this mouth.

    A tongue rolled across the gash of a mouth.

    Looking at the head it could not help but think of the head it had rotted away and drank the eye of before this point. At the start of this adventure in Mortis. The puppets head lolled in turn as though considering. "[Then let them flow. And I shall let my truths return in kind.]"

    Give us the Force. Give it to us. We wants it. She did not give to us. She takes.

    Give.


    [So many answers! So much truth! A leg shot out at the shock of it all. So much revealed in those simple words. So much.

    "[You have it already. You need not it from me or her, merely to learn how to use what you have. I came from the inspiration of Mnngal-Mnngal and Vitiate's experiments. You seek to come from the opposite direction. I can share knowledge of many who come from forms inanimate pure to somewhat like you're to the Force. I know not which best will apply or aid you, but I can give them all.

    Merely then the question becomes why? Why should I give. Typhojem and Abeloth take, why should I give?]"

    Because it is needed. Because it is wanted.

    A pause.

    A sloshing in the skull of the avatar of Mnngal-Mnngal.

    Trade. Sentient's trade.

    In the Holocron's minds eye, a world appeared. It showed a Temple, a Zakuulian design, and it showed a room. In that room was a sarcophagus. To the left was a device, with a slot, about the size of a Holocron.

    There was a desk, with tomes, and in those times -

    A place where dead matter can become undead flesh. Found this in the mind of food.

    The image vanished.

    The avatars mouth worked. 'Co-or-din-ates. Give them to you, I can. The For-ce. Tell me of the For-ce, and how you hav-e it.' The mouth yawed. 'Traaaaa-de.'

    At the mention of the world old memories from it's birth age bubbled up. Poured over. "Izax. Scyva. Tyth. Aivela. Esne. . .Nahut." It muttered. The head rolled, and minds churned at this thought. Such a thought. Nahut. Possibly? Could it be?

    "[Share the full mind of food, and it is Accepted.]" the voice simply echoed.

    "[Open your minds, and I shall give all I know of the others first, myself last. For as I said I came from the opposite way, and so shall be the last.]" Did this count as light? It may never know, but it was time no matter the possible truths it had found.

    The body vanished and became liquid again, as it opened and Accepted, greedily becoming flood to consume what the Holocron had for it.

    Knowledge of acquiring the Force, with Mnngal-Mnngal itself as a semi-sentient inanimate object that had gone very, very mad.

    The Holocron gave up the information, and Mnngal-Mnngal took it with gluttony. With a swirl, it grabbed at the borrowed body of Soliquoy and held it firm while drowning in knowledge. How had the Holocron taken the Force?

    It acted, putting into place the incantation as it drained through its consciousness. But it did not realise that the effort required the commitment of soul, of your entirety, of your whole self. It was not told. Mnngal-Mnngal had no self. It was a grave of minds, that had reached the point of becoming semi-sentient and had sought true sentience.

    So abused by Abeloth it was that it consumed what was given with abandon. She had held it firm for a century, after she had fled into the Unknown, making it give and give and give and the Goddess never gave back, not even when she stepped into its body of bodies of bodies, made liquid by time.

    And as such, as Mnngal-Mnngal absorbed the belief it could become Forceful, it split along the many minds it had, as each dedicated itself to the Force. Shattering, breaking, coming apart.

    The body came back, clutching at the Holocron's chest.

    You...

    were...

    Untruthful.


    And so it ended, contact my apart at the seams of its grave mind. As if a pile of insects animating a bag into a terrifying form. A true boogie man with no sense of self save for the fear imbued in it by us. Not once, in a thirty millennia life, had someone not had that fear, to be able to bridge the gap. In that respect... Nobody truly living could have done what was done.

    And so Mnngal-Mnngal...

    Ceased to live by halves at all.

    TAG: Mitth_Fisto, Lady Belligerent, corinthia, Halle Dray


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
     
  4. Darth_Elu

    Darth_Elu Chosen One star 7

    Registered:
    Jan 2, 2003
    OOC: A mysterious working behind the workings from Sinrebirth and myself as in this fight, we have: A New Challenger!

    The Phantom & ???? IC:
    ~Loose Ends~

    The Phantom turned to his co-conspirator. His colleague may not have known the full extent of the Grand Design, but the Phantom had every intention of placing this one beside him. The Galaxy had more to it than just the New Sith Order, present or future. There were other factions at work here, and the Phantom, in his typical manner, sought to connect with them. After all, Manticore was the only High Lord that he considered could be a threat to the Triumvirate; he had hitherto unknown connections to the late Re'van and Tek, and also unclear ones to Draconis. As such it behooved the Phantom to dig into his past, for Manticore, as Haretisch was now discovering, gave not a micrometer.

    That had lead the Phantom to encountering Persevus. And while he had told Persevus his true identity - once, and under a very intense spell to conceal its impact, much in the way that speaking the name Samhain could reverberate across time and space and Teafa might recognise it even now - the Phantom did not wish for his plans to be discovered, and he still referred to himself as the Phantom.

    And so, he had bequeathed the coordinates of Mortis to him, and they had met a star system away in a stealth equipped star courier known only as the Infiltrator, and the Phantom, his call into the Force complete, turned back to the man with his enticement in hand.

    Yes, he had not mentioned the battle. Or Abeloth. Or Mnngal-Mnngal. But he had that incentive. A tome.

    For a ritual.

    An impossible ritual that had been performed successfully only once, and formed a connection that had been used by one Ku'ar Danar, but only in hindsight. A ritual which could be used once more, before it entered apoptosis. In point of fact, the Phantom believed it would not exist again, for it to truly work.

    He held out the Holocron to Persevus.

    Standing within the starship with his new companion in a secretive place near the even more elusive planet, Darth Persevus watched the being before him. This…Phantom.

    It would seem certain connections and a logical, inferring mind managed to lead them straight to him, though it must have been rather difficult by any account. No one simply found him when he did not wish to be, that was just not the way. Still, the Force had an interesting way of makings things happen. The Force and the things behind it. This was not lost on him, for he had done his own research long ago and was most certainly not to be considered one of the ignorant pulled along for the ride.

    At least, not until now. A man of the shadows, of archiving Sith history, suddenly dragged into the light of the big stage. Not to say there wasn't incentive by any means, indeed, it was held out to him invitingly. His robes shifted and the mask of Revan peered out from underneath the cloak. He seemed to take a moment of consideration, whether or not to accept such a coveted item. Persevus was a man of trinkets, very powerful and legacy-filled trinkets, but he was not a fool either. There were…steps. A procedure. Puzzles and traps, tests and willful domination in a myriad of ways.

    The figure before him was one worthy of pause, knowing its true identity. As surprised and honored at their meeting as he was, he never allowed his wits to leave him. To take this holocron of a name most had forgotten would mean a silent pact. A deal, witting or not. To become a cog in the thing called history as it unfolded. A player or a piece on the dejarik board of Fate would be a question he'd have to muse in retrospect and he had an inkling which it would be.

    He had met many in his time, some of which possessed the intellect that would have put the greatest philosophers or tacticians to shame. And each time he had to tread a careful line. But he knew where they were close to. Persevus also knew to be called like this meant something.

    Persevus was no fool. But he also knew when actions had to be taken, whether one wished it or not. Finding himself upon the playing board, he found that he could not retreat and look for another angle. Not yet. For now he had to choose his position upon it. That mask's gaze bore into the Phantom's own silently a beat longer, darkness radiating between the two of them so potently they may as well have been darker than space itself.

    A small sensation, at the back of is mind. One he was passing familiar with. It caused him to straighten slightly, head cocking faintly. Lord Manticore.

    Now he was intrigued. That was the connection, he was sure of it.

    He took the holocron at last.

    "Wish me to use it, don't you."

    The Phantom smiled. 'There is a ship in orbit for you. A converted luxury yacht of Senator Graul's. A promise was made that it would be returned to him.'

    Ripples echoed in the Force. Terrible deaths. Epic events. Momentous shifts. A battle within the Battle. No, three. The Well, the Tower, the Sarcophagus.

    'Within there is the ritual to 'move world's' set up. It need only be completed. But you will need three Sith to complete it. I cannot complete it as a Phantom, nor can I be present in person. I shall arrange their arrival, if you intend to become involved.'

    The Phantom nodded to himself. 'Regardless of whether you choose to involve yourself in the End of Time, you will be free to go. To attend to your colleague. Or to not. Whichever decision suits you most, Persevus.'

    The Phantom looked to the sky. He would remain here. The final stage was at hand.

    He would have everything in place, or he would not.

    Listening quietly till the Phantom had said all he would, with a quiet gaze to the sky immediately thereafter, Persevus once again found himself pondering his move. In reality, he was always pondering. Thinking, calculating. It would be so easy to slip up here, on the precipice of what was aptly named 'the End of Time.'

    The ripples were felt, fully now. Curious how he had not sensed them before. Battle, in its chaotic brilliance was being waged in three separate locations. Wheels within wheels, devices to serve a greater purpose. It wasn't lost on him. There was much going on here, this was set up in advance after all. Careful planning was indeed required for all of this. Such an aptitude was why he had had his eye on…"Phantom" for a while now. One day, he would collect from him as well. But until then and until he made it through this ritual in an act even he had never done.

    "How the Force gets more and more curious as time passes by," he mused, "You would think it would dull as the eons roll by."

    Pocketing the holocron and clasping his hands behind him, he turned to walk a few feet away. "Whichever suits me most. My, my. How generous. Desperation, a grand design, or an indelible mix of both you have going. All while the battle trembles in quite the other direction."

    A small spark of lightning flared across his robes and traveled up and down the length of them idly for a few seconds before fading from view. Another trinket that had been rather painstakingly annoying to get, but get it he had.

    "I will go, Senator Graul needs his yacht back after all. I imagine he will be picking up the Butcher of Coruscant for a joy ride after this is all done."

    Darkness ebbed and flowed with the masked one as he turned back to the being with him. "Of course, there was no way to say no. Not really. I look forward to seeing who else you managed to grab for this important ritual."

    He imparted one final message of his own before he began leaving for the luxury yacht. "After this is complete. I sense you will see me again. Phantom."

    With that, Darth Persevus made to leave. Whichever suits me most. How so very curious.


    Tag: Sinrebirth Darth_wanderguard Lady Belligerent greyjedi125 corinthia dragonsith13 Moonspun Dragon QueenSabe7 Darth Kronos Halle Dray - Mikaboshi Mitth_Fisto DarthIshyZ WookieeRage ConservativeJedi321 HanSolo29 E. L.Knight And Anyone Else I May Have Forgotten (apologies if so)
     
  5. Lady_Belligerent

    Lady_Belligerent Queen of the RPF, SWC, C&P, and Pancakes & Waffles star 10 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Jan 29, 2008
    IC: Bellorum - Combo with Halle Dray and Sinrebirth
    Monastery - Mortis


    Bellorum motioned for Kwea to follow quietly, and ducked behind the ornate stone columns to avoid the Koroo zealots. A few stubborn beetles were still gripping the hem of her tunic, dangling like decorative fringe. Glistening eyes looked up at her as she scowled and started to pluck them before they could climb up her torso.

    She crept around the side of the chamber, and pointed Kwea towards the large stone concealing the Daughter's remains. "I'll lift the stone, you stay close and be ready to grab the dagger if I'm unable to," she whispered, "the crypt could have a trap." She sighed softly before continuing, "and I've got a feeling Abeloth may try and stop us."

    Kwea nodded to acknowledge Lady Bellorum's plan. The little beetles were clinging to her exposed arms and neck and some were digging into her skin. She swept some away and discovered little trickles of blood from their bites.

    Kwea followed the Chiss woman and could feel death around her. This was a crypt after all but it was an odd feeling.The feeling was different from the one she had gotten when Haretisch had taken her on the catacombs mission. This was tinged with something far worse then death itself. Bellorum sighed and and told Kwea she felt that Abeloth would interfere.

    Kwea hadn't had an encounter with Abeloth as of yet and it wasn't something she had on her bucket list. She murmured an old prayer she had learned long, long ago. She wasn't one for religion but Kwea needed something somewhat comforting to draw away her uneasiness.

    It happened in a moment of incredible swiftness. The moment they opened the crypt Abeloth was there, standing between both of them and enmeshing their throats in her tentacles, looking to lift them off the ground and snap their throats. She didn't have a desire to play anymore. Abeloth did, however, focus upon Bellorum. 'Your lover betrayed the Order, and the Emperor is in the Shadows, defeated by my Family. You're all that's left.' She didn't even assign anything more than her distracted limb to Kwea.

    The last Dark Lord of the Sith standing was all the more fun to destroy.

    Bellorum slammed her mental shields, it may not keep Abeloth out, but it was worth trying. Her blade slashed at the tentacles that wrapped her throat. She'd been forced choked before, and this was certainly worse.

    Reaching out, Bellorum lifted a marble obelisk that sat on a slab near the far wall. It was a struggle that divided her attention, but she managed to send it sailing at the Beloved Queen.

    Kwea's heart started pounding. There she was, tentacles and all. One of the slimy appendages was closing off Kwea's airway. She closed her eyes and stuck out a hand, using as much of the Force as she could muster and sent forth a push. Abeloth wasn't someone she had learned much about so she wasn't completely sure what would work. All she could do was fight for her life.

    Wait. Haretisch had betrayed the Sith? Kwea's emotions flooded over and her anger suddenly aided the Force Push with greater strength. She didn't know why he had done it and she didn't care.

    Abeloth's attention was briefly divided, not in two, but in many ways, as she was running two bodies in reality and two Beyond the Shadows. Kwea's shove rocked her as she released her tentacles from the girl to gesture at the slab. It shattered, and Abeloth went to turn back to Kwea as Bellorum cut herself free. Ignoring Kwea in frustration, Abeloth stepped back from Bellorum's flurry long enough to unwrap her mental self and reach out with an incredibly powerful mind trick upon Bellorum. Stop.

    For a brief moment however, the sarcophagus to the Daughter's body was exposed, the Dagger of Mortis lightly held in her grasp as she eternally slept.

    'NO!' Bellorum mentally shoved Abeloth back, she had to get this crazy ass witch out of her head. "You know nothing of my lover, unless you somehow twisted his mind," she spat at the aberration, "go back to the swamp you crawled out of!" Bellorum thrust her arms weaving fire and air into an orb that burst over Abeloth.

    If she could just keep Abeloth distracted, 'come at me, bitch', Bellorum taunted her mentally. She had avoided glancing into the tomb lest Abeloth realize what she was doing. It was suicidal to provoke The Beloved Queen of the Stars, but she had to give Kwea every chance to get that dagger.

    Kwea's body dropped to the floor in a heap as Abeloth released her. Gasping for the breath that had been stolen from her, she looked up. Her keen eyes saw the opportunity they had been waiting for. Glancing up at Abeloth, Kwea stumbled up and started quickly moving towards the sarcophagus.

    Her steps were quiet, making no sound at all. She settled her gaze on the newly revealed body. The body was that of a tall being, seven feet most likely. It was a woman. She still looked beautiful and appeared to be in a deep slumber. The Dagger of Mortis was grasped firmly in her pale hands.

    Ah, this must be the Daughter, Kwea thought. Carefully bending over the body, she gently pried the hands away from the hilt of the dagger. The blade was rather wide and slightly heavier than Kwea had expected.

    Looking back towards Abeloth and Bellorum, Kwea clenched her jaw. She crept towards Abeloth and raised the dagger, prepared to plunge it into the Beloved Queen's back.

    Abeloth blinked against the tide of fire and air as Bellorum went all out. She had struck back, hard, in her mind, and here, in reality. Abeloth welcomed the attack. She would crush the Dark Lord, end the leadership of the Sith just in time for her husband to be to emerge and shatter the cosmos. The surviving Sith would beg for forgiveness and she would give them it, slowly transforming each and every one of them into avatars of her will.

    She would rule forever as Abeloth, Empress, Queen, and Goddess.

    She leaned into Bellorum's attacks, burning away at her body, eating away at her mind, and did not care about them. She took another step towards Bellorum and ensnared her throat.

    But first!

    But first.

    She would break Darth Bellorum.

    The Dagger of Mortis plunged deep into Abeloth. Kwea gritted her teeth against the immense power she could feel from this being. The tentacles writhing from her hands wiggled and started to randomly shake. Abeloth'a body bent forwards and fell to the ground. Kwea ripped out the dagger and bent to see if the being was still alive. No breathing. She reached out into the Force and felt nothing. There was a void that Abeloth had filled that was now gaping wide open.

    Kwea wiped her brow to get rid of the sweat and ran to Lady Bellorum's side. "What will you have me do? Also, what do I do with this thing?" she asked, referring to the dagger.

    Abeloth felt the blade drive deep, and hard, and her energy drain from her. No. They hadn't. They couldn't've.

    The void was consuming her.

    Abeloth through herself away. Away from the void consuming this avatar. She tried, desperately, to sever the connection between her and the void.

    But it followed.

    Before Bellorum and Kwea, the body turned to dust.

    Bellorum's eyes went from the dust to the dagger in Kwea's hand, "here, give it to me," she replied and took the weapon. She waved a hand at the dust and sent it scattering, "I think we'll hold on to it for now, because I'm not convinced she's gone yet."

    She knelt at the side of the Daughter's body and gently repositioned the hands that had once held the dagger. It wasn't only because Bellorum felt a need to be respectful to the deceased Goddess. No, a sparkle had caught her eye when the stone slab had lifted, and she wanted to see what else was in the sarcophagus.

    It appeared to be a sort of holocron, but it was unlike any other she'd seen. "We need to go assist the others back on the veranda," she told Kwea and grabbed the sparking treasure. It pulsed in her hand and turned warm before Bellorum tucked it into her pocket.

    She slid the Mortis dagger into the scabbard that held her beskad from Golg, and then waved the slab across to reseal the Daughter's tomb. "We are needed elsewhere now," Bellorum sighed as she led Kwea out to where the other Shadows had continued to fight.

    Leaving the cultists to the others, Bellorum knelt down and felt Arach's cool wrist as she noted Ike was up and fighting. It gave her a moment to breathe, so many were dying. She'd felt their deaths and more were dimming in the Force...

    Once they cleared out the cultists they would need a new plan, and Bellorum would lead them.

    Tag: Sinrebirth Halle Dray @ pretty much everyone. :)
     
  6. Sinrebirth

    Sinrebirth Mod-Emperor of the EUC, Lit, RPF and SWC star 10 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Nov 15, 2004
    IC: Darth Insipid
    The End

    It had been a cycle of terror. One moment, Abeloth was dominating him and Arach, Hades, Ravenous, Teafa and Anark, the next they were all awakening to see her recoiling from them, backing across the room having thrown Invidius and Esmerelda down, backing away from them as they came too, a storm of red lightning ebbing as a ship came down on the veranda - down the ramp in short order was Radian, Aryan, Jwob and Ravenous, weapons ready.

    The Emperor absently assumed that Abeloth had left orders for the surviving Cultists to keep their bodies safe for her to take. The survivors were hurriedly backing towards the opposite wall to Abeloth, talking among themselves - several, those covered most by Mnngal-Mnngal, had turned into dust and vanished. Insipid looked to the rest of his squadron; he noted that the skies had grown quiet, as Mnngal-TIEs fell from the sky gracefully, not a moment after they had finished off their surviving fighter craft.

    Hel, Cocytus and Draconis and the others were limned with that lightning, now fading away and leaving them to recover from the paralysis that had been eating at them, where they had been hit. Seemingly things been just as desperate in the Son's Tower as everywhere else.

    Insipid took a breath and pulled himself to his feet, noticing with alarm that one of Abeloth's supposedly dead avatars was midway to its feet and wheezing. It has healed up, Abeloth forcing it's wounds back together, and the next her features slid away as if water, splashing to the floor and leaving Darth Hades' in the attire of a Koroo cultist, but definitely alive, and separated.

    The Emperor looked back to Abeloth with incredulity. What in the Nine Corellian Hells...? Abeloth's face was white with terror, eyes flittering from one foe to another, but as she locked pupils with Insipid he knew.

    Someone in Shadow Squadron had used the Dagger of Mortis on her. Insipid allowed himself to open his bond to Ike, and felt the man was alive. The rest of the Squadron was too. They'd not lost a single man or woman. Insipid looked back to Abeloth, preparing himself.

    She released a wave of energy across them, but Insipid drew the Force around him to shield him. While it would not perturb him, it would be strong enough to knock another Sith from his feet, without sufficient attention. Abeloth gasped, using her tentacles to grip the wall and hold herself upright. She was just too powerful to die, right now.

    The Emperor took one of his lightsabers from the floor, ignited it. It's silver blade echoed out across the silence.

    Abeloth released another wave of energy, shaking the damaged walls of the Tower. Insipid gestured, and dispelled it. He held a hand out to his fellow Sith as he strode forward, ordering them to hold. 'This ends here, Abeloth.'

    'No,' she breathed, pulling herself back up. 'I am the Goddess of the Stars. The Queen of Chaos. The Mother of the Ones. I am betrothed to Typhojem. I just need to...' Another struggling breath, wounds opening across her body, and her tentacles vanished into arms anew. She was deteriorating before their very eyes.

    There was a laugh.

    Insipid stopped a pace away from her, looked up. They all instantly knew that voice. It had echoed through them. You were never a Queen on my dejarik board my dear, sweet, Abeloth. I always intended for Haretisch to be the one to turn the Key.

    The Emperor knew what was to come, but he also knew that she deserved to hear this. It was obvious. She should have known. The Emperor did however cast his senses out and demand Radian and Ravenous take the winding staircase up the Tower post-haste, and for Jwob to get Aryan to prepare his ship to take them all down into the Well as soon as possible.

    You were always my Pawn. You and Mnngal-Mnngal both. Forever the Servant!

    Abeloth screamed, a shrill noise which was just a single sound. She had no more voices to her now, she was simply herself, a slither of a shattered soul in a broken body. Insipid whipped his blade around and ended it.

    For a brief moment the whole of Blade Squadron would feel the exhalation of everyone she had ever consumed, and know them. Admiral Natasi Daala. High Lord Korelei. Lieutenant Lydea Pagorski. Senator Rokari Kem. Theran Listener Nenn. Fallanassi Akanah. Dyon Stadd. Jedi Knight Callista Masana. Then there no more known names, stretching back a hundred millennia, a wave of released breath, and, finally, freedom.

    It was over.

    But, it was also only just beginning.

    Darth Insipid placed his lightsaber back on his belt, and tugged his second blade back up his sleeve. He looked to the others, appraising wounds, judging whether any had broken mentally, emotionally preparing himself for the next step.

    He hadn't seen this coming. Not really. It was Sith, to prepare for treachery. To expect it. But not in this.

    And now everything was at risk.

    After a moment of gathering his wits, the Emperor of the Sith spoke, hesitantly, pushing past his fear for what was to come. Another man he had respected, shared food with, and all but trusted.

    'We have to hurry to stop Haretisch from releasing Typhojem.'

    'We don't have much time.'

    He looked at the three dozen cultists left. They huddled with their weapons, edging towards the veranda. One spoke up. 'It's not over yet. He will come. It is inevitable.'

    Insipid looked at the others, pointed at their foes.

    'No He won't.'

    TAG: Snokers, Darth Kronos, dARTh Elu, HanSolo29, DarthIshyZ, A Blind Prophet, WookieeRage, ConservativeJedi321, Lady Belligerent, Darth Cocytus, dragonsith13, E. L.Knight


    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
     
  7. QueenSabe7

    QueenSabe7 Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Mar 23, 2001
    Combo with Mikaboshi! [face_skull]


    IC: The Lorekeeper & Darth Syren
    The Well of the Dark Side


    The Lorekeeper looked down with surprise at the red blade that erupted from his chest, he tried to speak but could not find his breathe, only a few drops of red spittle managed to escape his mouth. Looking up at the battle before him his eyes went blurry for a moment, finally able to refocus on the form of Darth Haretisch as he was furiously engaged in combat with High Lord Manticore.

    It was then that he realized death had not forsaken him after all, in the past few days he had begun to wonder if he could in fact truly die. Nothing escaped death it seemed, even he, in fact he could almost smell the putrid odor of his flesh rotting even now.

    What have I done?!, Syren thought in shock, unable to speak. As she stumbled back from the Lorekeeper, her mangled hand and ravaged skin flared with more than just physical pain. She felt violated and tainted in a way that could not be described with words. She had been used, again, and could feel nothing but unbridled rage flooding over all other emotions and coursing through every inch of her body. All she saw was red. Throwing her head back to cry out once more, that was when the end came to abruptly cut her off.

    Darth Syren's yellowing eyes had just caught sight of the Night Herald moving to his feet, bloodied from a battle wound she had not witnessed. The lightning hit her square in the chest and the agony was so fierce and all-consuming that the torment lasted but a moment. Syren could not even formulate any last thoughts, if she were to have them.

    The Lorekeeper quickly realized that smell of rot was not his flesh, no, rather it was an old friend. His hand reached into his bag and brushed up against something slimy and soft, instantly he who knew what it was and smiled, a laugh would have escaped him then but it erupted into a fit of coughing which only produced more blood from his mouth.

    He was fading fast and he knew that his time was short, he had only one last brief moment in which to assist Lord Manticore. He pulled the item from his bag and threw it at the Night Herald, if he could have spoken it would have been accompanied with a curse on his soul. He did not last long enough to see if his assault had worked however, before the rotting fish ever struck the Triumvir the Lorekeeper's eyes clouded over and became milky, he was dead before he hit the floor.

    Meanwhile the heat of the lightning had scorched Lady Syren's skin and boiled her inside and out, sweeping from head to feet to hands and back again.

    Then, nothing.

    She felt nothing.

    She was nothing.

    Syren was… gone.



    ~



    Chaos

    The Lorekeeper awoke to a vast and confusing landscape, immediately his hand went to his chest but felt no pain, nor wound. He knew that he was no longer alive, but nor did it seem that he was dead in the traditional sense, he wasn't sure what state of being this was. In the peripheral of his vision he glimpsed a flash of red, Syren, he was not alone. In fact he sensed another, a being who eclipsed anything he had known before.

    A feeling of despair and unease filled his soul.

    There was no way Syren could know how long she had been… elsewhere. More appropriately perhaps, how long she had been nowhere. Viciously torn from one place and forced into another, that was all the apprentice could register as she slowly came to.

    She was on her back and could feel a soft ground beneath her. As if waking up from a long sleep, Syren sluggishly peeled her eyes open and was met with a grey sky that hung above. Her head rolled to one side and her gaze followed a sea of grass to the horizon. It was nothing more than above meeting below. All else was nondescript. And her pain nonexistent. Examining her left hand and feeling out for her shoulder, both injuries were gone; the skin and bones whole and new.

    What is this place?

    A shiver ran over her body then. Indeed, there was a chill in the air but it had nothing to do with temperature. It felt as if something was missing or lessened and replaced with another that did not fit. It was unnatural and wrong… and intimately familiar.

    "Welcome," a smooth voice would say, and standing before them was a male. Skin as black as tar. Black hair. Black teeth. Black robes. Only his eyes differentiated him from a three dimensional silhouette - radiant eyes of yellow fire.

    Startled, Syren pushed herself up to her knees and raised her head to follow the source of a voice she knew all too well. A gasp escaped her lips as she took in the creature that stood so near. She knew exactly who it was. It could be no one else. And so she understood the strange sensation of something gone. In lieu of the Force, He was all she could sense. In, around and through, He was everywhere. It was exactly like before, when he turned her into his puppet, made her…

    Lorekeeper. She whipped sharply around to her other side as if already knowing he would be there, close by. As her eyes found the High Lord, a wave of shame struck her and she averted her gaze almost immediately. Instead, she slid her focus back to her tormentor.

    "I am the left-handed lord. And you have entered my domain," he offered a crooked smile. "There is something I would offer you."

    Syren was momentarily gripped with a fear so intense that she began to involuntarily shake. She was at a loss for how to respond to a physical embodiment of the ultimate evil and her mind was of no assistance. A chaotic mess, she was not able to mentally grasp the full extent of the surreal hell she was in - dead and speaking to Typhojem, face to face. It was an odd disconnect, but the apprentice knew that if she truly did understand... it would most likely break her. And that couldn't happen now.

    So, what did one do at the feet of a malevolent God? Glancing down at how she was positioned, she was doing exactly what most would: kneel.

    A flood of emotion filled the Lorekeeper, so overwhelmed was he at the experience that he could only sit in stunned silence before the master of Darth Cruor, the Left-Handed Lord, the most powerful ancient divine being of Sith lore. Here he was, a lowly archivist, sitting before a god. It was again a flash of red that brought him back in the moment, and he knelt beside her in reverence to Typhojem.

    Glancing quickly at the Lorekeeper before making a decision, Syren forced herself up onto unsteady feet and faced the Left-Handed Lord. Like looking into a sun, her eyes burned but amid the tremors that continued to subtly run over her body, she fought every urge to turn away. Surprising herself, she found her voice.

    “If it is the same offer you gave Haretisch,” Syren spat his name with venom, the smallest fire of determination burning in her chest. “I will pass.” As she finished, she suddenly felt sick wondering if speaking out in defiance, or some semblance of it, had been one giant mistake.

    Her companion however was of a different mind. After all, how often did gods choose to make offers to the dead. It was then that he rose, humbly and so afraid that he could not look the being in his face. "What is your offer my Lord?" He said with a mix of reverence and terror.


    TAGS: Mikaboshi Darth_wanderguard
     
    Mikaboshi, Darth_Elu, Snokers and 9 others like this.
  8. Darth_wanderguard

    Darth_wanderguard Game Host star 6 VIP - Game Host

    Registered:
    Apr 26, 2005
    GM UPDATE

    IC: Darth Haretisch -- Well of the Dark Side

    And so came the end.

    Two lay dead within the rune of power. Two had bled within it as well. Only Manticore stood in the way of destruction. He had only to bleed, and he would be savior to the galaxy. He had only to die, and all life would die with him. Flowers would wilt. Tongues would rot between words. Even the very stars would be snuffed like candles.

    Bathed in lightning, the Stygian Executor was struck full force by the Night Herald's electric wrath, a silhouette against the blinding white which enveloped his form. Black robes smoked and caught fire, red skin bubbled and drew tight across straining cords of muscle.

    And yet he pressed forward still, indomitably.

    Two scarlet blades struck out with deadly intent. Lightning abated, as Haretisch shifted to bite back. In the blur of motion that followed, each combatant lost something. The Night Herald's right arm hit the ground, severed at the elbow, and he was rent nearly in twain as a lightsaber tore into his side, while Manticore was opened deeply across the width and length of his torso in a charred, bloody cross.

    The pair fell upon one another in a ragged heap, each beaten and burned and conquered by the other. Only one still breathed.

    TAG: no one

    ~~~~~

    IC: Typhojem -- Chaos

    "If it is the same offer you gave Haretisch, I will pass," Syren spat the words like venom. In the moments afterward, it seemed she had come to realize she had just spoken defiantly to a god. A coal black tongue poked from Typhojem's mouth, running the length of His lips to taste the wave of fear tingling upon them.

    Did she fear complete destruction even beyond death itself? That she would be consumed wholly by the Left-Handed God, or live for eternity in unending torment simply for an insolent word? It mattered not, for no retribution came. Instead, He laughed. Not a malevolent laugh, nor a knowing, mischievous one. Simply a small chuckle of genuine amusement.

    "Such defiance," He smiled brilliantly, or at least insofar as black teeth and lips and eyes can be so. "We shall see, my little tool of destruction."

    "What is your offer my lord?" the Lorekeeper spoke up. If he held any ill will towards the apprentice who had been responsible for his death, he did not show it. Nor did he appear to feel any anger or regret at his own demise. Instead he seemed... starstruck? As well he should have been in the presence of a god, Typhojem thought.

    "Patience," He admonished, a grin still playing at the corners of his mouth. "I have waited thirty thousand years for my vengeance, and still do I wait. You can wait only a moment for your own."

    TAG: no one
     
  9. E. L.Knight

    E. L.Knight Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Dec 4, 2012
    Darth Hades
    Mortis

    He looked at his hands and then touched his chest, his arms, his face. It was no dream, here he stood. He looked around and was surprised to be here, alive. Then he was drawn back to the moment. Insipid pointed at the cultists and the understanding was, "Kill them."

    Hades grinned as he removed the top from the cultist attire and held one of the black bladed lightsabers aloft, igniting it.

    Go, stop Harestisch. These are mine.

    TAG: Sinrebirth, everyone else.
     
  10. Darth_wanderguard

    Darth_wanderguard Game Host star 6 VIP - Game Host

    Registered:
    Apr 26, 2005
    GM UPDATE

    IC: Darth Haretisch -- Well of the Dark Side

    Haretisch gasped, trying in vain to breathe, drowning in his own blood. Manticore's smoldering, lifeless body was draped over what remained of his own. He did not bask in victory. There was no victory - only an end soon coming to the abject personal defeat that his life had become. His mind wandered in his final moments, thinking of his lover Bellorum, his apprentice Kwea, his friend Arach, his tense ally Insipid. Had he possessed the strength of body, he would have wept for every comrade he had forsaken.

    Instead, with the last of his life, he reached out with a trembling hand to grasp Manticore's remains in a cradle of force energy. He was weak, and every remaining trace of his focus was required simply to move the final key piece into place.

    Then he breathed his last, and as his hand fell limply to the ground, so did the Stygian Executor fall, coming to rest beside his comrades within the rune. The lock was turned.

    The Left-Handed Lord was come.

    TAG: Sinrebirth
     
  11. Sinrebirth

    Sinrebirth Mod-Emperor of the EUC, Lit, RPF and SWC star 10 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Nov 15, 2004
    IC: Ike
    Shadow Squadron

    Two had gone to face Abeloth, and three were held here by the horde of Cultists. Ike exchanged a grin with Hesper, who was doing what she did best, injured or not.

    They were winning, it was unmistakable. For a brief moment, at least. But there were plenty of Cultists frozen in place, unable to move, as if Mnngal-Mnngal had checked out. A good two dozen men and women of various species, holding firm with black ichor as their clothing and a black sheen on their blades.

    Ike caught a bolt on his blade by chance but another skipped across his thigh, dropping him to a knee but he still managed to bring his weapon up in time to shatter a club being swung down. With a gesture he drove the foe backwards and with an exertion turned the shove into a lightning burst.

    Darth Insipid suddenly returned to the Force. It seemed as if he wasn't going to have to kill Teafa after all. His smile widened.

    In the next moment the Mnngal-Mnngal cultists were falling to the ground, the liquid burning through their skin and dissolving into nothing. For a moment Ike was struck by the absolute certainty that Soliquoy, the Holocron, had done something.

    With the death of those cultists, the odds were now considerably better. A dozen ordinary zealots against Hesper, Zalen, and Ike?

    They could do it.

    He was sure of it.

    All they had to do was -

    - all of a sudden a hand burst from his chest. It was a shadowed hand, it was covered in blood, and he breathed out with in-shock. Ike tried to look behind him at the silent vision, a mouth forming, but working, the word only across the gap of minds. I'm free. He pulled his hand out, and Ike tumbled to his back, looking upwards. Typhojem did not even admire his handiwork, just the blood dripping from his fingers. The First.

    But not the Last.

    Time... To be real.

    Typhojem turned to face Bellorum and the Dagger of Mortis, still speaking with his mind. You may as well try it out on me; get that hope out of the way.

    He drew the dagger to her hand and dragged her towards Him; plunged the blade deep in his heart. No effect, for a long, terrible, moment. Typhojem faded away, his mind still murmuring, but now with amusement.

    Ike, also, began to fade to black.

    He reached out, reassuring his friend, Bellorum, but it hurt so much, and he may have reassured Kwea instead, or even the Holocron. He surged against it, trying his hardest to find Haretisch and hate him, but he was gone, or too far away. But he would not be daunted in death, he pushed, pushed, and pushed his consciousness out, finding purchase against the wall my soul but he still took the time to poke Kronos flirtatiously, on his way to find his true target.

    Darth Insipid.

    His reach suddenly faded, and he had no more time.

    All he could do was whisper as blood trickled down his chin.

    'Love you.'

    TAG: Lady Belligerent, Halle Dray, Darth_wanderguard, corinthia, Darth Kronos


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  12. Snokers

    Snokers Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jul 8, 2015
    IC: Darth Anark
    The Surface


    Being wrenched back to reality from… that place made him nauseous. He would half-wish he was still inside Abeloth’s fish bowl once he stood up and was ambushed by the agonizing pain in his back from where it had been stomped on and the gash in his abdomen from where he’d been shot by one of her minions, not to mention the sickening numbness in his hand from where it had swallowed a blaster bolt of its own.

    But stood, he did, as straight as his spine would permit him.

    There was a stillness in the air now, it was quiet, almost serene in contrast to the mayhem that had ensued in the hours before. The loudest sound he could hear was his own heartbeat in his ears, coupled with mild panting from some of his fellow Sith around him who were, like him, likely still processing everything and letting their bodies catch up with all the exertion.

    He watched as the Emperor of the Sith ignited his silver blade and strolled towards Abeloth, each of his footfalls echoing through those standing behind him. Abeloth - a dark and powerful creature of old that had tormented, used, and consumed so many, now expending the last of herself throwing futile waves of energy which Insipid waved away in a graceful gesture of dismissal, she rattled of the many titles she’d adorned herself with as she tried to fight the inevitable.

    Anark wiped a streak of sweat from his upper lip and grunted in discomfort. He cocked his head slightly to one side, addressing Teafa but keeping his sympathetic, almost pitying eyes on Abeloth and spoke in tones broken by rapid breathing.

    “She really was… a beautiful… butterfly.”

    And then that voice reverberated through them all…

    You were never a Queen on my dejarik board my dear, sweet, Abeloth. I always intended for Haretisch to be the one to turn the Key. You were always my Pawn. You and Mnngal-Mnngal both. Forever the Servant!

    Anark lifted his gaze to the skies above and smiled.

    The voice inside made its first observation since he’d been stuck in the shadow realm.

    It’s so far from over!

    The mad Sith decided to ignore it for now and just let himself be in the moment. He brought his eyes back down just in time to watch Emperor Insipid end the beast with one swift stroke of his weapon.

    “We have to hurry to stop Haretisch from releasing Typhojem. We don’t have much time.” The words came cold and definite.

    Anark could feel hate eat at him when he envisioned the Night Herald in his mind.

    “It's not over yet. He will come. It is inevitable.” one cultist declared.

    “No he won’t.” Insipid retorted, shifting his eyes to them all and pointing to the Queen of Chaos’ last potential avatar meat.

    The Lone Inquisitor let loose a dark, rumbling chuckle he’d been holding back and lit his scarlet blade.

    But before he could put one foot in front of the other, a familiar voice sounded, one that conjured up the memory of fighting the horde on the mountain pass back on Moraband…

    Hades!

    ‘Go, stop Harestisch. These are mine.’

    Anark disengaged his saber and braced himself for what was to come.


    TAG: All & None
     
  13. Halle Dray

    Halle Dray Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 6, 2016
    IC: Kwea Acantha
    Monastery- Mortis

    In a blinding swirl of purple, Kwea sliced through two cultists before they had a chance at survival. She, Kwea Acantha, had just killed Abeloth. HER!!!

    Adrenaline was flowing at what seemed like light speed through her veins. Her body worked with her lightsaber in fluid motions. With a move of her leg, she felt the little holocron in move in her pocket. Dang nabbit, she'd forgotten about it! Cutting down another cultist who had a vibroblade, Kwea touched the holocron with her left hand, ever so gently. Sending to it, through the Force, a question.

    "Are you still there?"

    Kwea knew holocrons could come in contact with entities like Abeloth and who1knows-who-else. She wasn't sure if this one had been affected by anyone or if, perhaps, it had been dozing off during her victorious moment.

    Continuing out of the crypt, she encountered some more of the cultists and one, she gave a kick to the groin and another, she sliced in half with one strokes. The one she had kicked, she stabbed straight through with her blade. Ah, the look of horror on his face. Kwea favored the look of fear for a moment before looking back for Lady Bellorum.

    TAGS: DarthIshyZ Mitth_Fisto, Lady Belligerent corinthia @Simrebirth
     
  14. A Blind Prophet

    A Blind Prophet Jedi Master star 4

    Registered:
    Mar 25, 2016
    IC: Teafa Phaidraig/ Tower of the Son/ Mortis

    Pain. Her world was pain. Every breath sent a shock through her system, echoing in her head due to the blow that she'd taken in the duel with the wookiee. While Teafa knew she was lucky to even be awake after being in that other place, she would have preferred something that resembled her time as a slave significantly less. This isn't the first time you've had broken ribs. Deal with it. Beginning to draw on the Force to sustain her, the physical problems began to fade into the background as Ashla came to her call. It was refreshing and life, and she wished that she knew some healing technique to utilize the flood of light that suffused her being.

    Letting her focus float wherever the Force would take it, she picked up on some... some... Phantom? Persevus? What's going on... Who is Samhain? She saw only the slightest snippets, a holocron changing hands and something about a ritual, but not even remotely enough to make sense of what was going on. Or how it might be connected to their current situation. More names with no connection to meaning, things that might as well be myth taken physical form such as Mortis itself.

    Trying to draw her focus back to her immediate surroundings, she felt the Well of the Darkside, and she gasped. There was nothing but death as cracks formed in the walls, and boulders fell from the cliffside that made up the hole into the Well itself. What had happened she had no clue, but a fight of titanic proportions had occurred in that dark place, and it was feeding something. Typhojem... They failed. We failed. A sense of impending doom settled firmly upon Teafa's spirit and she felt like curling up in a ball. But her body wouldn't obey her commands quite yet, even if it hadn't been battered and seared by lightning, her spirit had and her spirit was still weary and recovering. So all that she could do was lay there while her focus floated about her.

    She heard the one that Abeloth had called Anark say something to her about how much of a beautiful butterfly Abeloth had been. While Teafa couldn't see the beauty that he was talking about, there was definitely something to pity in Abeloth. She was a being that had been snubbed her entire life, when all she had wanted was to be loved, to be part of a family. It did beggar the imagination that something as powerful as she had been hadn't been considered equal to the Ones, but there it was. Part of Teafa had seen it in the oh so distant past, and she knew it with a bedrock certainty. But that was beyond mattering at this point as Insipid, her master, moved towards Abeloth. A severely weakened Abeloth, one incapable of defending herself any longer. Insipid was simply batting away her attacks, even in his weakened stated.

    And then the voice came, and Teafa felt a chill down to the very core of her being. It was a confirmation of what she had seen in the well, and now everyone else would know of it as well. Hell Squadron had failed completely, and they were all dead. That was the only way that Typhojem could be speaking to them in such a manner. He was coming, and existence itself would pay the price for the failures of the Sith. She lay there numb while Insipid put Abeloth out of her misery, because surely it was even more so as she found out that she had been nothing more than a pawn... just as she had been her entire existence in some way or another.

    Forcing her body to move, she knew that there were still cultists about, beings that would be more than happy to put her out of her own misery, but that wasn't part of Teafa's plans just yet. Talwar, I wish you were here to help me. She felt out of her depth here, but then she had ever since landing on Morabund and that hadn't stopped her from cutting an Abeloth in two. She suspected that Talwar would have had even less of an idea what to do in this situation as he was far more by the book than she had ever been. He'd probably have tried to take all of the sith in... or kill them, and would be very dead as a result of it.

    Hades spoke up, saying that he would take care of all of the cultists that were here. While she knew that she should have been surprised at Hades not being dead any longer, somehow nothing could really surprise her in this place. Not anymore. Not after what she had seen, what she had done, and what she had felt through the Force. So as she began to rise to her feet, staggering and falling again, she quickly realized that she had a concussion as well as broken ribs. So much for balance. Drawing even more heavily on the Force, knowing it would ultimately wear her out but knowing there was nothing for it at the moment, Teafa forced herself upright, arms held out for balance, she began making her way to Insipid. He had to know about the vision she had seen, the vision about Persevus and the Phantom. And Samhain.

    Catching up to him, Teafa said, "Master, does the name Persevus mean anything to you? I saw him receiving a holocron from someone known only as Phantom. About some kind of ritual." Pausing for a moment, she debated mentioning Samhain. She had no idea who or what it might be, or what it might mean. But withholding information in this situation could be nothing but deadly. "And there was something about Samhain, if you know what that is." Her voice wasn't the steadiest, and she was doing everything she could to keep from whimpering with every breath. To keep from swaying. Had she been on top of things as normal she would have realized that this was likely not the best time to be speaking to him, though she wouldn't have been able to guess what had upset him so much.

    Reaching towards her belts for the first time since waking, realizing she should check her equipment, she found that she was missing something. After this, she would have to see about finding the Ssi-ruuk and getting the lightsaber Visas Marr had given her back. She would need it, even if only for comfort as she was dying. At least she had a spare to give him, the one she had taken from the ship.


    TAG: Sinrebirth, Darth_Elu, Snokers, Blade Squadron, etc
     
  15. Sinrebirth

    Sinrebirth Mod-Emperor of the EUC, Lit, RPF and SWC star 10 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Nov 15, 2004
    GM POST ONE OF THREE

    IC: Darth Insipid

    The End

    It had happened.

    He had hedged all his bets, and put everything in place, and it had all gone wrong. One would have hoped that Darth Haretisch could have been overwhelmed by the three High Lords had he been a traitor. Bellorum? She could not have been relied upon to act in their interests; revealing all that he knew would have seen the whole scheme compromised.

    Darth Insipid spun out, and slashed at a cultist out of frustration. Headless, it teetered, and then he cut down as he turned back to split it in two, and promptly mired his boot in ichor as he crushed the still-teeth-gnashing head.

    He had failed Ike.

    'Go,' he said, to the others. He had to ignore Teafa. If he spoke aloud, now, about Persevus, about his Phantom, he would get caught in his lie. 'This is a defeat.'

    In the Force, he urged them to trust him one more time, to believe in him, to have faith that the Triumvirate, nay the Duumvirate, had a plan. That they could come back from this.

    The entire air crackled not with energy, not with power, but with the fetid decaying sense of death. Insipid could feel his very skin crawl at the sensation, at the moment.

    There was a definite, immense, gesture in the Force, and all that stood now were the Sith; the horde was atomised and ash. They had no foe but Him.

    But the Left Handed God.

    Typhojem.

    The sky buckled and convulsing liquid poured down from it, forming a small figure which floated down, undescript, just a shadow with glowing red eyes. It was in this Tower that Ahsoka had been corrupted by the Son a hundred and seventy five years earlier. It was on this world that the Father spoke to Anakin Skywalker about his coming death. About the imbalance of the Force. The Sith thrived on that... But they also, unchecked, could invite this.

    It was not possible to define Typhojem, as he touched down without a sound.

    A hundred eyes on a bulky body; a thrashing of tentacles from his skin; a layering of flesh that pulsed across the floor; and the next he was a defined but shaded man, impossible to say when the shadow began and ended, the black dancing up the walls, now two eyes, each burning with the brightness of a sun.

    He turned a pupil upon Jwob; his skin caught alight.

    He thought of Invidius; his blood girdled in his throat and drowned him.

    He absently turned a hand; Esmerelda's skin turned inside out; Kronos would see it happen.

    They all died; would all awake in a mirror realm which was all obscured by dust and ash; like being caught outside in a sandstorm on Moraband, but it was everywhere. Haretisch, Syren, Manticore and the Lorekeeper would all be there. All trapped, and they would be able to sense what Typhojem was doing, and unable to do anything about it, and realise that they were inside Hell... Inside Typhojem.

    He was a walking hell dimension.

    Darth Insipid reverently raised two hands as a flicker of his mind shoved Teafa back, away from certain death; he drew upon a hundred years of power, more than a century of hate, and suddenly found he could reach much, much further than he had been able to. The connections he had glimpsed Beyond the Shadows, they were the bonds he had forcibly forged with his fellow Sith, when he had threw the Wrath into a sun. Now, in this moment of terrifying clarity, he could identify the strands and pluck at them.

    With a snarl he grasped at the meld that had historically been offered by Kwea, by Hesper, by Zalen, by anyone he could wrap into his cocoon of power; he could only reach those three, in such a short time frame, they would feel that he had yanked on them, violating them, his leaning on them felt like his jaw at their throats, demanding support. For a brief and terrifying moment it would seem like Insipid intended to kill them; to suck them dry.

    He did.

    He had no time for politics, for niceties, for politeness.

    Typhojem's mind wandered as to the potential for opposition in the Galaxy at large; Coruscant fell into the black hole which suddenly appeared beside it; Moraband transformed into an ice covered world, and the population suddenly found their oxygen had been converted to methane on Hapes.

    Billions died.

    His form became spectral, a mass of smoke convalescing into a hooded man, his face ash, his eyes brimstone. Then he solidified, his skin pockmarked with tattoos which wept black blood; the blood touched the floor and burned through, hissing audibly.

    Insipid took the power of himself, of Kwea, of Hesper, of Zalen; and a torrent of energy emerged from his hands. Power, pure and unadulterated; Insipid felt his hands burn, skin melting off his nerves and his nerves off his flesh and his flesh off his bones. The full force of the blast full-on hit Typhojem, throwing back a shockwave of wind, and even blowing apart the far wall of the Tower.

    He didn't notice.

    He did find it amusing that Ike had died with purple on, and it had mingled with the blood on his robes gaily. That amusement rippled out, the slightest murmur of a laugh acting as a wavefront and crashing into Insipid and sending the Dark Lord flying to the opposite side of the room; into the wall; through it. Hesper, Kwea, and Zalen, would all, via their connection, feel their bones shattering but it was only Insipid's; they were unharmed in actuality.

    Well; those three were. Typhojem decided he liked Anark's marred face; so he ripped it off - but he was not dead, no, Anark was perfectly alive, but just bereft of the skin of his face; however Hades joined the others in Hell when he suddenly found that he was reconfigured into his constituent atoms, as Typhojem removed the magnetic field holding him together; off to Hell he went; dead for a second time after a brief, brief moment of life; Typhojem killed him purely for that reason. The Left Handed God's eyes rolled into diamonds for a moment, of their own accord; the movement made him think of Teafa and her eyes, and they suddenly acquired sight and eyeballs and popped, but not before the liquid that filed them was replaced with acid. She, at least, would not die. Neither would Aryan, though those extra two pairs of arms he sprouted would definitely reflect the arachnid he was. If Arach ever met him, then she would likely collect him.

    Even as Typhojem's attention wandered, the Tower was collapsing from the pressure of a God being within his walls, masonry breaking, the entire building coming down; the archway was still standing, just, as was the corridor to the shuttle which had come down to evacuate them if needed. A massive chunk plummeted towards Cocytus; the floor cracked open near Draconis; an entire wall gave way and suddenly Hel was hanging off a precipice; the winds howled and sought to draw Teafa out and down the edge of the mountain to his death. Everyone who was left would be buffeted by the elements; the bodies would be swept away in the storm unless held close.

    RUN!

    Insipid's voice screamed at them to make it to the ship, to do anything but be noticed by Typhojem. Soa's voice suddenly appeared and demanded that they stay, that they fight, that they try. Insipid begged them to run; Typhojem heard him, and ripped his tongue from his face; but being as it was his mental tongue he simply ripped Insipid's soul free of his body - but instead of falling into Hell it became indistinct, as if Typhojem's will had ripped it entirely apart.

    Bellorum became Empress by default.

    Someone stepped forward into the chamber.

    He had a Jedi cloak on.

    He did nothing to stop them from fleeing.

    He simply pulled back his hood and revealed the face of Cade Skywalker readied his lightsaber. A green blade burst forth.

    Typhojem gave the Heir of the Chosen One all of his attention as daylight filled the Force. Cade raised a hand and pushed the God back, pushed him with all of his might, as if he was rooted in the very heart of the Force. His eyes caught that of Radian, of Kronos, of Ravenous; bid them to follow him forward.

    They all had but a moment to run.

    Were their instruments able to ascertain this, they would churn with information; an anomaly was about to arrive near Mortis. It was big. It was powerful. The Force darkened, but it was the dark side, not death itself.

    Similarly, the small ship, the vessel of Aryan Graul, rumbled in the turbulence echoing out from Mortis. A room was ready, three were ready.

    Their very last chances were being thrown at Typhojem.

    TAG: Halle Dray, corinthia, all of Blade Squadron plus E. L.Knight, DarthIshyZ and dragonsith13


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  16. Lady_Belligerent

    Lady_Belligerent Queen of the RPF, SWC, C&P, and Pancakes & Waffles star 10 Staff Member Manager

    Registered:
    Jan 29, 2008
    GM Update 2 of 3

    IC: Bellorum
    Monastery - Mortis

    Kwea Acantha glowed brilliantly in the Force as she sliced through cultists. Her enthusiasm was the panacea Bellorum needed right now to face what was ahead. For a moment she dared to think of how proud he would have been of his apprentice, and felt a pain that was almost physical. 'Haretisch'.

    Arach was starting to stir as Bellorum gently shook her arm, "do you feel strong enough to get to the shuttle? We need to be ready to blow this place as soon as the remaining cultists are eliminated." She'd had no communications from Blade, yet she'd felt surprise and death from some of them.

    Death. 'No, there'd be time later for reflection,' she sternly told herself.

    Bellorum was standing up from helping Arach when she felt a gentle caress against her cheek. Her hand went to her face instantly and before she could scream, she felt the dagger pulled from her scabbard and saw Ike struggling to speak.

    "Typhojem"

    The bloodied hand shoved the dagger into her hand and pulled her to him, she resisted and was simply dragged like a stubborn toddler with legs locked in place. Her arm was made to stab him, but she only glared at him and scowled.

    You may as well try it out on me; get that hope out of the way.

    "Don't kriffing play games with me. I'll not be your puppet," her words came in a crescendo as he faded away murmuring.

    Then a shadowy hand burst from Ike's chest.

    "No!" Bellorum screamed in fury. She didn't recognize the voice to be her own as it echoed off the stone veranda and the facade of the ancient building.

    As soon as her movements were her own again, she ran to Ike's side. Bellorum grasped his wrist and felt his neck in a futile effort to find a pulse, even though she knew. He was gone, she'd felt him go.

    She felt the tears coming and quickly brushed them aside before anyone could see her. Looking up she saw Hesper, "I'll not leave him here, help me lift him," Bellorum grasped his shoulders and lifted. She needed to physically carry him, it was a burden she felt was necessary.

    "Leave the fighters," she ordered the other women, "we can come back for them if needed." She looked to Kwea, "grab the droid you had and let's take it with us."

    "Get his lightsaber," Bellorum ordered Zalen, and nodded towards the hilt he'd dropped as he'd fell. "I want to - " Bellorum's eye's widened for a moment as all of existence darkened at once.

    A contagion of deaths had rippled through the Force in quick succession and perfect synchronicity. She swallowed and looked to the women gathered around her, "he's been released. Typhojem has been released."

    Everything had changed.

    "We've got to get out of here - now!"

    Some ran for gear from their fighters while Bellorum lead Hesper with Ike's body up the ramp and through to her private cabin, laying him on the daybed. She smoothed his hair, and covered him with a silken blanket.

    Then she swallowed her grief and asked Hesper, "check on Arach, you may need to pilot if she's not recovered fully. Get us to the Son's Tower, or whatever is left of it and we will get the survivors. Be ready for anything - literally anything."

    "Once we've got them I'll know what we're doing next."

    Tag: Sinrebirth corinthia Halle Dray Moonspun Dragon Darth_wanderguard
     
  17. Darth_wanderguard

    Darth_wanderguard Game Host star 6 VIP - Game Host

    Registered:
    Apr 26, 2005
    GM Update 3 of 3

    IC: Darth Haretisch -- Hell

    In hell, a field of green beneath a twisting gray sky had given way to heat and flame, to a sky of blood red and jagged ground of black stone, the distance shrouded by a thick haze of sulfuric ash.

    Haretisch woke filled with confusion, suspended in midair by invisible restraints, arms and legs outstretched. This wasn't right. He was promised that this wouldn't happen.

    Syren and the Lorekeeper stood a short distance away, and beside them the others whom had died would suddenly be present as though they had always been.

    "And behold," Typhojem laughed, turning to the crowd which had gathered. "I have delivered unto you a traitor."

    Manticore, Syren, Lorekeeper, Invidius, Zalen, Jwob Sebb, Esmerelda, Hades, and the consort - all would be witness to the spectacle unfolding.

    "I... I don't understand," Haretisch said quietly, though his words would be heard by all.

    "Yes, I'm sure you're worried by now that I've lied to you..." Typhojem chuckled, looking back. "You will get your wish - be at ease on that account. I've only delayed your reward, not denied it. It's only that I cannot bear to see you destroyed having been kept in the dark."

    He turned to address the spectators as he continued. "Unfortunately for the lot of you, my dear deceased friends, Darth Haretisch was already a traitor long before he tricked you all into acting as agents of my now reborn Infinite Sith Empire. Indeed he was even a traitor before he ever came under my influence at all. He became a traitor when, drunk with power and mad like a diseased animal, he murdered an innocent woman. A woman who loved him."

    The Left Handed Lord turned to point an accusing finger at Haretisch, still suspended several feet from the ground.

    "And it was the guilt and the shame of this misdeed which led him to sacrifice you all. He chose to damn each of you to eternal torment, in exchange for a simple promise that he be imparted to the void when his deed was finished, that he be allowed to forget himself and become one with nothingness. It is insanity," Typhojem spoke with true scorn for the first time. "And yet, I am a gracious god," his tone turned magnanimous again, "and madness or not, I will grant him what he is owed."

    "But not," he looked back to Haretisch, "before he knows the *truth* of what he has willingly forfeit. Not before he understands fully what, and who, he has forsaken. Not before he hungers for life. And not before I may deny him. Not before he knows that he has destroyed... His daughter."

    A pregnant pause followed. Haretisch looked on, bewildered. Typhojem addressed him directly now.

    "Darth Dreadwar created her in the interest of gaining leverage. Or perhaps simply as a way of hurting you should the desire arise.

    Her mother is Theona Kalo."


    The Night Herald's chest nearly exploded with grief. What had he done?

    "And now the one known as Hel, the last living remnant of her," Typhojem accentuated the last word, making clear of whom it was that he spoke, "will die. And I will consume her. And she will be gone just as you will be gone, and you will have killed her just as you killed her mother. You poor, miserable idiot."

    Horror. Rage. Despair. Humiliation. Haretisch felt each in spades as he was dressed down and laid bare before all who were present, but all of these in short order would give way to a new sensation. One he had not felt since his youth.

    Fear of death.

    "Now, I offer you this," Typhojem turned again to Manticore, to Syren, to the Lorekeeper, and all the others Haretisch had betrayed. "Fall on your faces. Worship me, call me lord and god and master, and I will allow you to flay the betrayer's very soul piece by piece until he exists no longer."

    "He is a liar."

    The Night Herald's voice boomed from behind, and for a moment Typhojem seemed almost surprised by the outburst.

    Fear of death had become determination to escape it. "Destroy me," Haretisch started, "and he will consume you all. Do not submit to him."

    TAG: greyjedi125, Mikaboshi, QueenSabe7, Darth_Elu, E. L.Knight, DarthIshyZ, Sinrebirth, Lady Belligerent
     
  18. greyjedi125

    greyjedi125 Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Apr 29, 2002
    IC: Lord Manticore
    Muspelheim

    This….this was NOT the Void.

    It took him a moment to understand that in truth, he was dead and no longer on Mortis. That this…this was not a trick of his own imagining. There was an inexplicable strangeness reported through all his senses, an immediate otherness.

    His own body seemed whole, but he knew this was not a corporeal body, like the one destroyed by…..

    Haretisch!!

    Manticore narrowed his fiery eyes as he watched and listened. All the dead sith were present. Syren, Lorekeeper, and others. More seemed to be materializing. That seemed inevitable at this point.

    Disgust welled inside Manticore at the spectacle displayed before him.

    The former Sith High Lord felt no pity whatsoever for the Night Herald. For all the Dark Lord’s intelligence, he actually believed that a dark deceiver such as Typhojem would actually deliver on a promise as intended??

    Fool

    The zabrak spat on the floor as he continued to listen, his mind racing in a million directions.

    Thyphojem was darkness and evil, but not an embodiment of chaos itself. He opposed order, rather, someone else’s order -not his own. Chaos was an absence of Order, and Order was Will exerted over Chaos. This little performance was proof of that. The fact that Typhojem had been sealed, meant there were ‘others’, Beings even he had to answer to on some level or another.

    As for this state of being…

    Manticore closed his eyes, then sat crossed legged on the floor, feeling out with his senses. Could he touch the Force here? Perhaps all he needed to do was find the proper wavelength.

    Outside of the ‘Hell’ he and the others found themselves in, he could sense the unfathomable cataclysm being brought about by the Left Handed Lord, but there was little anyone present could do to prevent-much less assist- the rest of the galaxy. Still, they were in precisely the perfect place to do the most damage to their tormentor.

    If only…

    A near overwhelming wave of grief , hate, shame and despair proceeded from the hanging ‘Night Herald’, as the Left Handed Lord spun his cruel tale before everyone- but mostly for his own sadistic amusement. Perhaps this was the same being who inspired Lord Anguish so very many years ago-but that did not matter now.

    “Fall on your faces. Worship me, call me lord and god and master, and I will allow you to flay the betrayer's very soul piece by piece until he exists no longer.”

    Manticore scoffed at the Left Handed Lord’s offer, spitting on the ground for added effect.

    Did he truly believe that all sith were so exceedingly petty to be so blinded by his offer? Throughout sith history, treachery and betrayal yielded the same result. Ruin. Whatever temporary gains one could claim from such actions, never lasted very long. All betrayers came to ruin. It was a fool’s errand to engage in treachery, for it only led to a fool's end. Only now was Haretisch truly learning that lesson.


    "He is a liar. Destroy me, and he will consume you all. Do not submit to him."

    Haretisch bellowed from his chained restraints.

    “Hmph!”

    Manticore cared not to agree with the betrayer, but the nagai was not wrong in his assertions. He now had ‘practical’ experience.

    “A liar, and not all powerful either.” rasped the zabrak as he stood up now. He regarded everyone, then gave a cautionary look to the Lorekeeper, who was the only one kneeling before the being of Ancient Darkness.

    “You can destroy helpless galaxies and torture pawns who are basically powerless to resist you, but you cannot destroy the Light. You fear it. For all your boasting, it is the one thing you are incapable of….is that not so?”

    Of course it was. There were inexorable principles at work that bound the galaxy, even alternate ones. Typhojem could bend them, but not outright destroy them. The trick was figuring them out before it was truly too late.

    Damn it all. Where is she?


    Tag: @Darth_wanderguard, everyone in ‘Hell’
     
  19. corinthia

    corinthia Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Feb 16, 2016
    IC: Darth Hesper
    Mortis

    Hesper was in the heat of battle; she was able to lose herself in the rhythm of the massacre. Kwea and Bellorum were gone to face Abeloth, something Hesper was almost glad she didn’t have to take part in. She was content to do her part as a soldier on the battlefield, in the front lines, and she was glad to have Ike at her side and covering for her on her blind side. He grinned at her, and Hesper returned it with a snarling, fearsome grin of her own.

    The battle leaned in their favor. The Mnggal-mnggal-controlled cultists stood frozen in place, and Hesper didn’t bother to wonder why. She focused only on what was at hand: the other cultists who kept rushing she, Zalen, and Ike. Ike dropped to one knee after catching a bolt on his thigh, and the second after Hesper had glanced back to check on her new companion, the cultists slicked with Mnggal-mnggal ichor were falling, dissolving and burning up. Hesper chortled. The odds had just improved significantly. She opened her mouth to say something to Ike along those lines, but before she could—

    A hand. Shadowed and otherworldly, bursting forward through Ike’s chest, taking blood, bones and flesh with it. Blood smattered everywhere, splattering across Hesper’s face and lips. She gasped at the terrifying sight, one she would not soon forget. Hesper had not seen it coming, the hand had come from somewhere within Hesper’s blind spot. Stingingly cold panic snatched her lungs as she watched Ike attempt to look over his shoulder at the attacker. Typhojem. The words forming in Hesper’s mouth died and a wheezing, ghostly sound passed her blood-stained lips.

    She was petrified.

    Hesper looked at Typhojem: fear, embodied. She felt the blood drain from her face, and it took every modicum of willpower that Hesper possessed to not turn on her heel and run for her dear life and abandon all the Sith and the Mortis mission. But she had made a secret, unspoken promise to herself and to everyone she loved to follow through with her commitment to the Sith Empire when she had left behind her husband’s dead body in their flat on Coruscant—not even Typhojem could sway her from that. Even if at the moment Hesper could not will her body to move.

    Ike was dead; obviously so. Ripped to shreds. Typhojem had killed him, and as Typhojem pulled his hand from Ike and Ike toppled backward, Hesper took a frightened step forward, disengaging her lightsaber, dropping her blaster and reaching a hand out to her new-found comrade. She had never had a comrade die alongside her in battle before. She had almost thought that… her comrades could not die. Hesper chastised herself for the thought. No one is invincible, not even a Sith. “No,” she rasped, and rushed to Ike’s side, dropping to one knee as she felt him reach out, struggling, with the Force. “Ike, no,” she whispered, not sure what to do with her hands as Ike lay dying.

    Ike was fading. Fast. And Hesper could do nothing.

    Ike’s lips were moving, working out his last words. “Love you,” Ike whispered. Hesper knew those words were not meant for her—they were meant for someone else, someone much farther away yet agonizingly close to Ike’s breaking heart. She looked away and closed her eyes, feeling as if she were listening in on an intimate conversation. Bellorum rushed to his side, then, frantically searching for a pulse and finding none.

    Ike began to fade away, blood trickling down his chin and neck. And then he was gone.

    Hesper felt tears stream down both her cheeks. An invisible emotional weight pressed down upon Hesper, and she buckled, placing her left hand on the ground for support. Things were happening around her, but Hesper couldn’t hear a thing for the roaring sound of anger in her ears. But Bellorum’s voice cut through it all: “I’ll not leave him here.” Her voice was firm and stern. “Help me lift him.”

    She doled out a series of other orders before stopping cold. There was a ripple in the Force. Deaths. Many of them. It churned Hesper’s stomach and made her dizzy. “He’s been released,” Bellorum said quietly. “Typhojem has been released.”

    Hesper immediately felt her earlier fear was justified. Typhojem was about to lay waste to the galaxy.

    “We’ve got to get out of here—now!” Bellorum said tensely.

    Hesper quickly clipped her saber to her belt and pushed away her fear and sorrow, helping Bellorum to lift Ike’s quickly cooling body. They carried him up the loading ramp to the shuttle, Bellorum at Ike’s shoulders and Hesper at his legs. His chest was still ripped open, and a ghastly trail of blood followed them up into the shuttle and into Bellorum’s cabin, where they laid him out on the bed. Hesper stood behind Bellorum’s right shoulder as she bent and lovingly smoothed his hair before covering him with a sheet. The tears that had been threatening to form again in Hesper’s eyes dissolved—Hesper forced them away. She refused to let herself continue the vicious cycle of lamentation she had been trapped in until—until… her vision…? Hesper set her jaw. Though Ike was gone, there was no need to grieve. Especially not if they were about to face the Left-Handed God.

    Bellorum turned to her. “Check on Arach. You may need to pilot if she’s not recovered fully. Get us to the Son’s Tower, or whatever is left of it, and we will get the survivors. Be ready for anything—literally anything.” Hesper nodded firmly. Of course she would do whatever was necessary for the success of the Sith. There was no way she could walk away from the fight now. “Once we’ve got them,” Bellorum continued, “I’ll know what we’re doing next.”

    “Yes, my Lady,” Hesper said in her ever-steely voice, inclining her head towards Bellorum in reverence before leaving to locate Arach.

    She ran down the loading ramp again to find Arach outside the shuttle; finding Arach, she grasped the High Lord’s arm and looked her in the face. “Lady Arach,” Hesper said in a steady voice. “Are you in any shape to pilot? We’ve got to get going. There’s no time to waste.” Hesper helped Arach aboard the shuttle as the rest of the ladies clambered aboard, Kwea with a droid in tow. But Hesper paused at the top of the ramp, and looked back at the carnage on the veranda.

    Hesper knew something had changed within her during the vision she had experienced as they had arrived here at Mortis. She had learned something, though she knew not what, and she had no recollection of the vision. And so as Hesper shouldered off one strap of her pack and swung it around to reach into it, she made her own decision about what she had learned: to see things as they are, not as they could have been. Hesper withdrew her hand from her rucksack, the wrapped-up durni figurine in her palm. She stared at it for a long moment.

    Then, she threw it. Pitched it straight into the aftermath of the fight. “I’ve spent far too long focusing on what could have been,” Hesper muttered to herself. “Now it’s time to see what is. What might be—what will be.”

    Hesper closed her rucksack, and stepped into the shuttle as the ramp closed up behind her. But as it did…

    Pain.

    Through the Force, Hesper felt a sharp pull from a presence she immediately recognized as the Emperor Insipid’s—he drew so deeply on Hesper’s strength that she crumpled to her knees on the floor of the shuttle, screaming in agony. How…? Hesper wondered amid her screams. The sounds tearing from Hesper’s throat hardly sounded like her at all. There was a strange heaviness upon Hesper as Insipid drained her. Looking around the shuttle frantically, Hesper saw that Kwea was in a similar state of agony. Insipid is trying to kill us, Hesper thought frantically as she watched Kwea. She didn’t know if he was targeting any others—she could only hope she and Kwea were the only ones.

    Then, the initial pain became excruciating. One by one, it felt as though every bone in Hesper’s body broke. From her fingertips to her ribs, even her thighs and vertebrae. Logically, she would be dead if it were truly her bones breaking. But it was only an echo of what Insipid was experiencing, and as Hesper collapsed onto the floor, wracked with pain, she knew she was unharmed. And as soon as the pain had come over her, it was gone.

    Gasping for breath, Hesper pushed herself off the floor and back to standing. She swayed, a little tired, but ultimately willed her feet forward and to the cockpit. With effort, she pushed through the exhaustion brought on by Insipid’s little trick and broke into a jog. They still needed to go collect the survivors, and she refused to fail them. She would not lose more comrades to Typhojem.


    TAG: Lady Belligerent, Sinrebirth, Moonspun Dragon, Halle Dray, Shadow Squadron
     
  20. Snokers

    Snokers Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jul 8, 2015
    IC: Darth Anark
    Mortis


    His eyes almost bulged out of the skull that housed them when he witnessed the Left Handed God send the Emperor soaring through the air, straight through a wall, surely ending him.

    Then he saw that black gaze fix upon him with a meld of curiosity and amusement. Anark cocked his head to the side like a child seeing a moon in the sky for the first time. An instant later his face was torn from him, the skin literally ripped from the flesh.

    The Sith Inquisitor had screamed many a time this day but out of amusement, this was the first time in a long while he had screamed from pain. Horror! A blood curdling shriek reverberated from him, it’s decibels travelling an impressive distance as he dropped to the floor and rolled around as if he were on fire. He was. His face was on fire, or at least it felt as though it was. He rolled around, making the pain worse by scratching the raw flesh against the floor, making it ragged and feeling all his nerves turn on him.

    The screaming – naturally for him – morphed into howling hilarity as he flopped on the floor like a dying fish. When his face began to numb, the laughter that had seemed so uncontrollable stopped in an instant and his face, now the same color as his lightsaber, rested in a plain expression, mouth closed and eyes dazed.

    He felt Hesper, Kwea and Zalen’s pain cease in the Force and knew they were still alive. Bellorum, possibly the last survivor of the Triumvirate was also alive. When he tried to reach out further, a needle sharp shard of pain split his mind. He didn’t know if anyone else had made it. For all he knew that blind one who had stood beside him only moments before might have been obliterated by Typhojem during the attack on Anark.

    He thought of Haretisch and his betrayal. The Sith, celebrating a great victory on Moraband not too long ago, was being torn apart from the inside out.

    GET UP!! The voice from the void spat at him in his mind.

    “I can’t.” he said aloud in a tone of pure defeat.

    There was no response.

    Anark got to his feet, face numb and dripping blood, a piece of flesh falling to the ground with a splat as he hoisted himself upright, still sporting that emotionless, dead expression on his maimed face.

    Hesper. The High Lady was the only one left he knew absolutely that he trusted.A beacon of light in the dark of his mind.

    The Sith tried to find her again in the Force. He felt his mind begin to freeze over.

    Typhojem!

    He couldn’t see the Left Handed God. What body part would be wrenched from him next? Would his heart be ripped from his chest in a split second?

    He was consumed by fear of the thing that took his face. All thought ceased in his mind as he stood absolutely motionless in the centre of the floor.


    TAG: corinthia Sinrebirth A Blind Prophet E. L.Knight Lady Belligerent Blade Squadron, Shadow Squadron... all those not in the underworld.
     
  21. Halle Dray

    Halle Dray Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Jan 6, 2016
    IC: Kwea Acantha
    Mortis

    Kwea collapsed from the pain she felt. Her power, her life, her senses, seemed to be draining out of her. Then it all stopped. Then it was back again with even more pain this time. Emperor Insipid. She could feel him through the Force and knew something was wrong. He was dying. No, correction, he was being ripped apart. Then it stopped again and didn't resume.

    Crawling up off the floor, Kwea realized she was on the floor a lot.

    Shaking her head to clear the webs of pain, she saw Lady Bellorum and realized she had felt it too. Something was terribly wrong with the Emperor.

    ------------------------------------------------------------

    Honestly, Kwea had no clue who the hell Typhojem was so when Lady Bellorum said that name outloud, she was wildly confused.

    Maybe it's a food... doubt that... oh, ya know, it's probably some healing plant for that guy laying on the ground... why would she have said it so fearfully?... yeah, true.. crap, I know what it must be.... what?... another wackjob like Abeloth... seriously? ANOTHER one?... um, yup... dammit

    Kwea's conversations with herself were quite bizarre. However, usually they helped her figure stuff out. Bellorum broke her thoughts and told them to leave their starfighters. Kwea had a hard time doing so because who knew what thing on this planet might destroy hers. Then, Bellorum spoke directly to her, "Grab the droid you had and let's take it with us."

    "Will do," Kwea said and sprinted off to find her ship.

    Approaching it, she heard a few blurps and squeaks. Well, he'd seen her.

    "Hey 4T, how're ya doing?" she grumbled.

    "Bweep whoop splurrrrrrrp," he responded.

    "Yeah, some weird crap just went down in there. I stabbed this tentacle lady with the Dagger of Mortis," she told him as she got him out of his little slot.

    "Bweoop?" the little droid sounded.

    "No she wasn't pretty. Well, maybe some people would think she was but.. uh.. yeah, not me," Kwea answered him.

    "Swwurp beeble bloooooop," 4T chimed.

    "I don't know where we're going now but Lady Bellorum wanted me to get you. You better keep up with us, you hear?" she said.

    "Wurrbleeeepo," came his insistent reply.

    "You had enough time to charge, okay? Stop complaining you're overworked. I rarely use you!" Kwea exclaimed.

    "Vwoop," he moaned.

    Kwea just shook her head and continued jogging back to the squadron.

    She recognized Lady Hesper and of course Lady Bellorum and the dead man must've been Ike. She hadn't known Ike too well but she'd seen him around. A little odd but he seemed like a good companion. War was certainly a shame. There was another woman there, Zalen, Kwea thought her name might be. Hesper left after being told to check on Arach and Kwea remembered that Lady Arach was in their squadron too. There was a guy named Jwob who was supposed to be there but she didn't know where he was but he had been in charge of Deathy.

    Kwea took advantage of the little break and reached out with the Force. Then she felt it all. Death was dead, Haretisch was dead, Insipid was dead. There was more death but from Sith she hadn't known very well. She opened her eyes and snapped away from that feeling. Worrying about it and reflecting on the dead wasn't going to help the Sith right now.

    Kwea bit her lip and looked to Bellorum, yet again, for orders. She would do whatever she had to to help her and now, that was defeating this Typhojem. Whoever that was.

    Tags: Lady Belligerent @Sinrebrith DarthIshyZ Mitth_Fisto corinthia
     
  22. E. L.Knight

    E. L.Knight Jedi Grand Master star 4

    Registered:
    Dec 4, 2012
    Darth Hades
    Son's Tower, Mortis

    Hades prepared to fight the cultists when all of a sudden, nothing. He could see himself, his entire self being torn asunder. his mind registered no pain for it was an instantaneous death, but his mind also did not cease to exist as his body had.

    HELL

    He was now in a land that looked, well, evil. A brooding darkness accentuated by the blood red sky and ground of black. It seemed a wonderful place for the Sith to be, honestly, as if this realm was theirs to be inherited.

    He was gathered with several others, many he did not know, or knew only by name and little else. The Zabrak High Lord, Manticore was one he knew somewhat better than any of the others, having fought him so soon after his return to Moraband.

    And then, before them all was a being like none he could have imagined. Watching him go from liquid to shadow to smoke to a man was horrifying, yet a visual spectacle. The natural laws were rewritten by him at his whim. This must be Typhojem, he thought.

    Hades looked at each gathered in turn and wondered if they knew this was the end game. How could they defeat something so powerful a mere thought rewrote the universe.

    "And behold, I have delivered unto you a traitor."

    Hades was taken aback at the fact that Typhojem spoke and didn't just abandon them in Hell. what could the god be playing at?

    And then that was when he began his speech about Haretisch, and the Trium's darkest secrets were revealed, but what he revealed about Hel, was something that not even Hades could have imagined being a part of all of this.

    A Daughter...... Hel was his daughter.

    Hades thought of his own daughter, hidden from him as to keep her from becoming a Sith or knowing her father was one. The pain that he had felt after the death of her mother and her being hidden from him was still fresh thanks to Abeloth.

    He wondered if he would have chosen the same thing, to have Alexia back, to have his little girl Jada back, to be a family.

    He looked at Haretisch and knew, in that moment, traitor or not, he couldn't let Hel be harmed.​

    "Fall on your faces. Worship me, call me lord and god and master, and I will allow you toflay the betrayer's very soul piece by piece until he exists no longer."

    Hades stepped forward.

    No.

    It was siimple.

    He would stand until he was unmade and abandoned. Until he was destroyed beyond saving.

    Abeloth had taken him and forced him into her service, and now Typhojem had done the same. Hades did not know the Trium very well, but apparently, others were hating him quite a lot. He had did what grief and desolation had driven him to, and then the sweet lies of Typhojem had twisted him a new, used his pain to create a pawn.

    I stand with the living. I stand with The Force. I stand opposed to you.

    TAG: @Sinrebirth, Darth_wanderguard, greyjedi125, All others in Hell.
     
  23. Mitth_Fisto

    Mitth_Fisto Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Sep 29, 2005
    IC: Soliloquy
    Between the Tar Pit and the Lint, a tale from the Daughter's Tower

    As Mnngal-Mnggal stretched off of the blade it's borrowed and hollowed out body of a cultist held, it did nothing. As the tar like body grabbed and pierced it's borrowed hosts chest it did nothing. As Mnngal-Mnngal spoke, it listened. Then it's borrowed body sneered. "[You forgot to give. There is always a price, yours just for once, was death.]" It had tried to grasp at the memories as Mnngal-Mnngal lost them. What it gathered whether worth anything or not was something that would have to wait. After all as the body it was using started coughing up blood it was having to actually struggle to hold it's purchase but it did. Dead eyes locked on dying tar until both passed into the beyond or the nothing.

    Then as what it viewed through passed it's mind and focus was pulled back to itself, back to it's pocket. Back to seeing the rest of the room as it's carrier dispatched cultists with abandon even as a score or more seemed to melt away as though by acid. It saw the body of Abeloth, felt the truths of how it came to pass, and even felt it's carriers soft caress. It would of responded, was going to, but then they were visited. Ike was dead and there was no reason left to live. So a piece of itself had died, a piece it likely loved as much as the Emperor loved this thing Typhojem had just ripped the heart of. All it could do was pray that the shard Revanite Prard Seloni's soul, if in chaos and not in peace, would look after this wayward soul that screamed it's way with gentle gestures into hell.

    Then Kwea was drained, assaulted, and reeled. It would not answer, could not answer her in such a state for fear it would put it's own 'throat' onto the chopping block of what yet nibbled at her very being. It let her recover, it let them gain their footing. To speak now would be like speaking to a Rancor that had lost its disembodied head. It would do nothing but stir the rage in all the wrong directions, and possibly lock itself in their memories and their distrust. Still once she had retrieved the droid and had an amusing conversation with it, it decided it was time to interfere with her mind. To answer her for once.

    "Yes. I am here. Sorry I was busy, but Mnngal-Mnngal is dead. To the last drop. Everywhere in the galaxy. Although I have seen you have been busy as well. Now we shall likely head to the others. To fight a being that makes Vitiate look like a poser, and Abeloth a crazy heart sick teenager that cannot let go of an ex. We go to fight one who's story began before Soa and before Soliloquy." Pausing for a moment it contemplated the lint in it's pocket. Yes, it's pocket. It had earned that much. Still, perhaps if it moved the lint from here to there and grew a luminous mushroom here it would look much nicer. Hmmm. Oh yes, mentally talking to wearer of the pocket, yes. It was doing that. "I have a small spell I can give you. Take it if you wish, and restore your reserves by drawing on the ambient Force. In Mortis it is plentiful. Share if you wish." It had idly added as it took in the feel and flavor of the pilot. After all. All their lives were as much in that women's as the stray thoughts of Tyth.

    TAG: Halle Dray, Lady Belligerent, corinthia
     
  24. DarthIshyZ

    DarthIshyZ Chosen One star 8

    Registered:
    Jan 8, 2005
    IC: Jwob Sebb
    Mortis

    We were winning! The fight was turning our direction with Mnggal-Mnggal disappearing. Jwob felt delighted at this sudden turn of events. The cultists (and presumably the TIEs, too) that had been aided by this black mass were now standing relatively naked before the Sith. They could be cut down faster than we could think. Several of Blade Squadron started to do just that.

    Elation!

    But, just as suddenly it all took a dark turn. Typhojem was here.

    Hell Squadron had failed.

    Pain.

    Intense burning!

    Jwob didn't know if he was screaming in real life, but he was definitely screaming inside.

    There were no flames to put out, but his skin was bubbling as if he had fallen into lava.

    Death.

    Mother Jungle, Jwob was dead.

    But, in death he was released from pain. Jwob breathed from releif. Well, didn't breathe. He didn't need to. He didn't have a body that would need to breathe. He was dead.

    But, then why was Syren here? And the big fellow, Manticore, I believe he was called? And the Lorekeeper. He was with all of Hell Squadron here. There were two others he'd never met. He was in death with them?

    No. Limbo. Where?

    And he was here, too. Typhojem. He was saying something to us. "And behold, I have delivered unto you a traitor."

    "I... I don't understand," Haretisch said.

    Jwob thought, "Yeah, you and me both."

    Typhojem, the left-handed god, continued a story about relations and double crosses so incredibly complex that Jwob's mind swam.

    Haretisch had betrayed us?? The man he had been talking to just a few days before. He'd said, "I found a purpose in a burgeoning empire, and now we stand on the cusp of an ultimate and final victory." Was this the Victory that Haretisch had intended? This man... this being that Jwob had admired so much just a few days earlier. He had come to his own undoing. Jwob hung his head.

    And now he had to decide what to do with Haretisch. And with Typhojem.

    One of the others simply said, "No."

    Jwob's heart sank. He's faced with two killers. Two liars. And he had to choose one?

    TAG: @greyjedi125, @Mikaboshi, @QueenSabe7, @Darth_Elu, @E. L.Knight, Darth_wanderguard
     
  25. QueenSabe7

    QueenSabe7 Chosen One star 6

    Registered:
    Mar 23, 2001
    IC: Darth Syren
    The Hell of Chaos/Chaos of Hell

    Syren’s fear reached a fever pitch and her body tensed. Why did you speak, you fool! She braced herself for a backlash of the truly horrible sort. The Left-Handed Lord, a God, could do unfathomable things to her she imagined. Or was unable to imagine.

    However, no harm came her way and the creature simply laughed. "Such defiance. We shall see, my little tool of destruction."

    His tool? The words made her skin crawl. She was filled with such revulsion, again the sensation that she had been defiled. A pure and focused rage for the almighty seized her and she swore she could feel the swell of the dark side within… but, it couldn’t be. It could only be Him. Right?

    A red haze still flooded her senses causing Syren to quiver with mixed fright and fury. Listening to the Lorekeeper’s seemingly wiser, more cautious response, she glanced over to the High Lord at her side as Typhojem spoke again.

    "Patience. I have waited thirty thousand years for my vengeance, and still do I wait. You can wait only a moment for your own."

    Vengeance... Yes, she wanted vengeance. The apprentice would have loved nothing more than to run her crimson blades through the physical darkness that stood so close, no matter how futile the act would be. She wanted to tear Him down with her bare hands…

    The growing intensity of her emotions was forced to momentarily plateau as the scene shifted around her with incredible quickness. The green grass and grey skies morphed and melded into black rock and fiery clouds of ash. A stifling heat followed and Syren looked about wildly, taking in their new surroundings. The formidable dark being remained before her and just beyond…. Haretisch. The traitor that had knowingly led her and Lorekeeper to their deaths had obviously met his own end, being here with them now. She wondered if that meant Manticore had succeeded, but out of the corners of Syren’s eyes, more things that hadn’t been there before suddenly appeared. Briefly looking to either side, those she saw there were mostly familiar, one unknown.

    The Zabrak High Lord was among them, the failure of the Key now complete.

    Her focus shifted wholly upon the man held aloft and bound by unseen restraints. As before, when he had stood over her preparing to end her life for the first time, she would not look away. Hands clenched into fists, rage returning anew. She wanted to scream at him. She wanted to hurt him.

    "I... I don't understand," the former Night Herald said.

    Typhojem began regaling them all with a story that revealed several shocking truths and added a new layer of confusion that she pushed aside. Glaring at Haretisch in examination, he appeared very different to her now, in death. Before this mess that was Mortis had begun, she had seen him as strong and revered. And here… he looked weak, defeated, afraid.

    Good.

    Syren struggled against the rising tide of darkness that continued coiling about, its pull threatening her control. That void of the Force that had been crudely filled by Typhojem, she was sensing it more so then when she first arrived in this hell. It struck her that she could not be sure if this was her own hate, the Left-Handed Lord’s or a mixture of both but it was fueling her in this moment, pushing her towards an edge.

    "Now, I offer you this," the vicious God added as focus was returned to Syren and the others."Fall on your faces. Worship me, call me lord and god and master, and I will allow you to flay the betrayer's very soul piece by piece until he exists no longer."

    Haretisch called out to those gathered around. She sneered, nails cutting into skin as her hands squeezed tighter.

    "He is a liar. Destroy me and he will consume you all. Do not submit to him."

    “A liar, and not all powerful either…” Lord Manticore began, but she went blank to his next words.

    Standing here, faced with both her tormentor and her killer… She needed this, was owed this.

    Syren impulsively raised both arms, hands reaching toward the captive Dark Lord, eyes narrowing at his levitating form. Regardless if she would be able to make the proper connection without a certain link to the Force, she attempted to utilize Mind Shard once more. But it came with a far sharper focus than she had in The Well, all of the frustration and anger and raw hate she was feeling poured into her concentration. No seals, blood or key pieces… just pain. The waves traveled through her repeatedly and she felt them leave her body. Whether or not they met her target… she did not know.

    But it was pointless. This passionate outburst served no real purpose, not now.

    After only a few moments, she broke free of her rage with a great surge of will and turned away, panting. Syren latched onto the smallest bit of satisfaction in her assumedly successful act of revenge, but she was done. She wished to do no further harm to the man that took her life, not at the cost the Left-Handed Lord required. She would rather die than kneel and seeing as how that had already taken place… she would prepare to face whatever was beyond death in the realm of a God.

    She quickly looked to the others whom she stood beside, eyes lingering on the ssi-ruu she had met only recently. Invidius. Seems they might be in need of the other much sooner than she had thought. Strangely enough, he and her fellow Sith bolstered her resolve just enough for her to find her voice.

    Turning to peer over her shoulder but not looking directly at Typhojem, Syren spoke as strongly as she could to Him and all.

    “As I told you before, my Lord,” she growled. “I will pass.”

    This time she knew there would be a price for defiance.


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