Private Vaulted

[Xander Blackmoore]

WEARING: xxx
WEAPONS: Lightsaber
TAG: Velda Nar-Donna

Centuries were often found in one place, and Xander often looked on such places feeling as though only a few weeks had passed since he held them in his hands. Time was a fickle thing, more fluid and less linear than his younger self had wanted to believe. He had been young and naive. Now he looked young, but had suffered for his youthful hubris. Placed in a force stasis by an unknown entity or artifact, the young monarch lost time.

His awakening had been rude, difficult. Face after face with familiar names but unrecognizable features haunted his new reality. Thrust into the future in what had felt like seconds to him, the Sith Lord lost everything he'd sacrificed to build and secure. His palace had been reduced to rubble, save for the vault which laid untouched below foundations of his ancestral home.

This was the price he had paid for his hubris.

For his penance it seemed the Galaxy would continue to bring challenges and memories his way. It had taken another lifetime to be free of them, Viren, Van-Derveld, the Mecetti, but in time he had become his own once again. The shackles of his past had been shed, and the man had walked through victorious.

Now he walked something different, another set of monuments given to the past. A new face, a new name, Nar-Donna. She was a curious one, someone the former king did not know well enough to have an opinion on. He was intrigued to be sure, but what was it about her which drew him in? It was something he hoped to determine with time, that fickle thing which had proven unreliable.

"Tell me more about this one," he said, pointing to an artifact which seemed inert. "You told me each one has a story attached to it. What is the tale belonging to this one?"

 

[Velda Nar-Donna]

WEARING: xxx
WEAPONS: 2x lightsabers
TAG: Xander Blackmoore

Here, beneath the opulant spires and walls of Castle Nar-Donna, the lower levels comprised a domain rarely ventured. A peculiar sensation clung to the air down here, as if the veil of reality between this realm, and other, perhaps darker realms, were at its thinnest.

Within the recesses near the concealed entryway, extensive spaces unfolded into meticulously crafted chambers. These refined sanctuaries, curated for the relics of the dark side, set the stage for a sinister elegance throughout the underground level’s subterranean expanse.

Deeper still, within the labyrinth of passageways that unfurled for miles in this abode of arcane knowledge. One would see completed chambers and passageways turned into cold, carved Corellian rock if one had decided to continue exploring.

Her father was never able to complete the unrefined outer reaches of this lower-level secretive domain. And yet, it still served its purpose nicely.

It was down here where Velda’s introduction to the Dark Side and subsequent study of it in her time as a child, began. It was down here, where she became a Sith, and who she is today.

Tonight, she was not alone; she was presenting Xander with some relics, artifacts, tomes, holocrons, and other otherworldly items found within the depths of the abode.

She found Xander, who was a mysterious figure, captivating. With much of his history shrouded in time, a man who carried himself with the regal essence of a noble, something she could easily see. For Velda, as a child, elegance and refinement were strictly learned, to the point that such mannerisms became a part of her, and something she did not have to think about. It came naturally to her.

And he was intriguing, there was all that, all that she had recognized, and then something else.

As they toured one of the chambers, he drew her attention to one of the artifacts. An artifact that seemed to be cracked in battle, of a long past history.

“Oh, that…” Velda took a breath. “There is quite the story behind that one. It is an emblem of a believed ancient Sith cult whose name is lost to the passage of time. Supposedly, according to the lore that I was told, it sat atop and was part of a larger unit that, when complete, could open channels to the Chaos of the Netherworld, and perhaps even the Bogan itself. It was a transmitter of sorts. It was also told that it opened portals to other dimensions as well. It is believed that it met its fate a long time ago and was destroyed. This is the only known piece remaining of it.”

As they continued on, she pointed out a book, bound in leather, thick with many pages, without a name. “That is a spellbook written by a Dathomiri witch who had left her coven. It is extremely powerful, but the price for such power is potentially one’s soul. There are many soul traps found throughout the book. If one becomes ensnared, one loses themselves to the book forever. It also happens to be alive in a sense.”

Velda herself studied the book in its entirety; her father offered her no other option. Thankfully, she was one of the few who learned its wisdom and kept her soul doing so, only to have her heart swayed by the dark side.

 

[Xander Blackmoore]

WEARING: xxx
WEAPONS: Lightsaber
TAG: Velda Nar-Donna

Ancient history was a fascinating subject. Sith cults often littered the pages of it, and all of them seemed to end with a similar downfall. It should have served as a warning to all others which attempted the same thing. The truth was as cliche as the saying, those who refuse to study history are doomed to repeat its mistakes. Xander was one which did not wish to fall into that trap. There was also another truth. One could be so stuck in the past they never moved forward. Vizios was unwilling to allow that to be said of him as well.

His eyes moved from the artifact to the woman giving him the tour. She was interesting, elusive in some ways, and completely a mystery in every way. There was something predictable about her, however, as though Xander and Velda had done this dance a thousand times before. It was the familiarity with someone still a stranger which piqued his curiosity. She reminded him of his past, and yet, she was something entirely new.

“My first lover was bound to a certain Dathomir witch who found herself among a SIth Council of sorts. I visited the planet once, and I have no desire to find myself there again. The planet threatens to consume in the same way you say that tome does.”

A smirk pulled at his lips as he moved on to another part of the vault. It was more complete, looking less like a restoration project, and something more fitting for treating items of particular value. Whether the relics in this section held some sort of monetary value or not, it was clear they were prized by the Nar-Donna family. Be it her father, or the woman herself, Xander was certain he would find clues to unravel the mystery they presented him.

He was quiet as he perused the artifacts and treasures. Jewels, books, paintings, sculptures, and trinkets, were arranged by type and in some form of order. Maybe it was when they were acquired. One such item seemed to draw the Assassin King’s attention. His feet moved toward it as though the power of it drew him, pulling him without choice. If Xander was exercising his free will, the mesmerized look of his countenance might suggest otherwise.

It was familiar.

The dagger was made of black obsidian rock, and the design and shape of the knapping which had formed was identical to something from Xander’s memory. Suddenly his mind was taken back to his father’s vault, a childhood which had not been kind. The man had been ruthless and uncaring. Vizios had not felt any guilt for his part in the death of his father. His hands were covered in his father’s blood still. It had been the first life the young man had taken, his gateway to even more bloodshed. It had been the path which had taken him to the Sith, and eventually the throne of the Indupar Crown Worlds. The government had collapsed in his absence and stasis, but the vault on Ec Pand was still there.

Xander had visited it many times.

“Yours or your father’s,” he asked as his attention turned back toward Velda.

 

[Velda Nar-Donna]

WEARING: xxx
WEAPONS: 2x lightsabers
TAG: Xander Blackmoore

She found Xander's appraisal of Dathomir completely correct. Dathomir was a planet deeply immersed in the ichor of the Force. The witches approached the Dark Side through spells and rituals, finding their connection to the Force through the Bogan, much like the Sith. However, their philosophies differed; the witches took a more natural approach, while the Sith often embraced desire and sheer will to manifest their dark machinations and desires.

Nevertheless, even with Velda's abundant knowledge of Dathomiri magic, she remained open to the possibility that much remained unknown on the topic to her. And she harbored no doubts that the planet threatened to consume and devour any that dared try to unlock it's estoric secrets.

She stayed at Xander's side as he made his way through the vault. A mysterious dagger caught his attention, prompting Velda to reply, a weapon whose presence was all too familiar to Velda but the past of the blade she found to be still shrouded in mystery.

"It was my father's before he passed, and now mine, by inheritance," she said thoughtfully. The cadence of her voice sang as if she were recalling memories and moments from her early childhood.

"Most of my training began down here when I was very young, just a child," she recalled, her thoughts drifting back to her father. "Every trial was a battle for survival, and failure meant death. He would accept nothing else."

She also remembered a rare instance where her training took place off-world. She was tasked with building a makeshift lightsaber from blaster parts and destroying assassin droids hunting her. Even though she completed the task and prevailed, it was a moment she could never forgive her father for.

"He discovered it years ago," she continued, gesturing to the dagger. "Yet its secrets still elude me. I have often wondered if there are other examples like it."

As her eyes lingered on the blade, Velda turned to Xander, curiosity glinting in her gaze. "Are you familiar with it?"

The intriguing mystique the man held to Velda was now ever the more present. She softly gazed upon him, wondering if the dagger held any significance for him and if its presence stirred long-dormant memories.

 

[Xander Blackmoore]

WEARING: xxx
WEAPONS: Lightsaber
TAG: Velda Nar-Donna

From Xander’s estimation both of them shared hard fathers. Hers had ensured she learned the dark side, trained to kill. Xander’s father had simply been a cruel man. The items in his vault had been the most important to him, and the man had a fascination with dark side artifacts. A sith had come to Xander’s home at a young age, coinciding with a rebellion. Charles Blackmoore… his subjects had hated him and his iron fist so much they rose against him. The Duke had learned he could not negotiate with a Sith warrior.

Xander killed him on that day. It had been his freedom, and his initiation into the Sith. They had learned he was a seer, thus his name eventually given to him by his master.

Darth Vizios.

It was an odd skill for a boy so young, but Xander often painted what he saw. He had predicted the uprising, and even the face of the woman that would become his master. What Xander had not seen was that it was his hand attached to the blade which killed his father. What Xander painted happened. It was not always complete, but it happened.

She motioned to the knife.

Did he know it?

Xander nodded.

“My father had its twin inside his vault.”

The answer was simple and straightforward. She did not need to know anything else. Neither of them knew if the daggers did anything, but now that they knew both belonged to a pair they could speculate. His eyes drifted away from the dagger eventually and looked to the woman which acted as his tour guide in the moment.

“My father was heavy handed, and it led to his downfall. I killed him, though had I not he would have seen me executed for treason. I was eighteen. The Sith which came to retrieve an artifact my father had in the vault took me in, and that led me here.”

What Xander skipped over was the stasis he had been trapped in, the lovers of his past, and the throne which was his to reclaim and occupy. All that she needed to know for now was his status as the White Assassin. He had been quiet for some time, nor did he have any desire to pull together Tsis’Kaar as his own. Something new was needed. Perhaps they would build it together.

“I have not been home in a decade. Perhaps this mystery would give me a reason. That is… if my current company wishes to go on an adventure?”

 

[Velda Nar-Donna]

WEARING: xxx
WEAPONS: 2x lightsabers
TAG: Xander Blackmoore

She had considered as much, and entertained the possibility that the dagger may indeed have a twin. Her eyes, alight with curiosity, lingered upon the enigmatic weapon, its allure twined with danger yet adorned with an artistic elegance befitting a museum exhibit.

But what good would such a dagger do as a display piece? When it could be used for more useful activities?

She reached and picked up the artistic blade from its mantle, and holding it in hand she gave it a thorough look-over, scrutinizing every embellishment, trying to spy something she may have overlooked with it. It was, she had to admit, rather impressive.

After she finished, she gently handed it to Xander.

Xander spoke of his father and his father's wishes to have him executed for treason. And so young at eighteen.

"One person's actor of treason can be another person's freedom fighter. It would appear that your father left you no choice," she mused, her voice a melodic echo in the chamber's stillness. "Self-preservation and survival are the natural order of things after all."

And in direct conflict with the whims of Ashla that their misguided counterparts so adore. But nature and Ashla never really seemed to see many things in common. Survival of the strongest and most clever and adept seemed to be the way of nature. And the way nature within the galaxy seemed to govern itself.

Velda had been rather quiet as well, biding her time in the embrace of the shadows. All the while, hunting the Sith assassin that she had encountered during the Battle of Exegol. Of whom she knew a fair bit by now, still, his current location eluded her. Even so, she had traced his allegiance back to the ill-fated Tsis'Kaar. Perhaps it was time, however, for something fresh and new.

"A decade is quite a long time to be away from home, but I would be delighted to accompany you on your adventure. Perhaps we will discover some other things along the way as well."

They could encounter many things, interesting, or perhaps even delightfully dangerous.