Faction Asha'kurat | Dream Police

[Darth Empyrean]

Vash'karath
902 ABY

The City of Dreams, Vash'karath stood on the precipice of infinity and nonexistence. Manifest into reality by will alone, it stood as a testament to the power of a Veritas and of Empyrean himself. He strode into the city, in its endless avenues and hallways, walking through a world that answered to him in its entirety. Today, however, was not to be his - it was a christening of something greater. For decades, Empyrean had built upon his name some of the greatest accomplishments any being had managed, let alone of the Sith - they would all be turned to this new Order, this new beginning.​

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So that his ambitions, his beliefs, would far outstrip his already ended life.​

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Far from the center of this dream were pillars being erected, both by his own will, but the will of other Veritas to believed in his vision. Other sorcerers, many of which he had taught, combined their skills to anchor this world into reality even now. Empyrean would not assist them now, instead he stepped into nothing and appeared in Verak'tal, the Hall of Voices. It was a transparent floor, and the 'door' disappeared behind him - leaving the Emperor walking over literal stars.​

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The abyss beneath him shifted and swirled with each step, and the obsidian walls glowed fiercely at his approach. With a raise of his hand, he would force the walls to break in their small alcoves, creating portals to the other realm in each. With it came a message, appearing before each;​

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"Come and see."​

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Some, like Srina Talon and Taeli Raaf had already known of what he had created in the Asha'kurat. They were true Asharim, as they deserved to be - but now was the time for others to join them as well. Kaila Irons , Allyson Locke , and more besides. Today was a day for them to see that the future was beholden to them, their designs, their personal prophecy.​

 

[Srina Talon]

Tag: Darth Empyrean
Location: Vash'karath
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A hush rippled through the Force before silence snapped.

There was only one door, one portal, that opened for her, but she instinctively knew that these points of entry had opened across the galaxy. Blooming, like wounds in reality. Not a summons of desperation but a calling of certainty. The words echoed in her mind before they could be carried through the ether, and she found herself walking forward. It was effortless, this sensation of falling, and piteously easy to bend for the directive that came from her other half.

He called. She answered—It was the way of it.

She left the chill of her private sanctum to step through the fold in space as if walking, sinking, from one room to another. One breath and she was amidst cold obsidian and sterile, metallic walls, and the next she was surrounded by stars. The ground beneath her feet felt like some sort of Force-Woven transparency. Not glass, nothing so pedestrian, but thought made form to offer the most eye-opening view of velvet space she could imagine. The heel of her boot clicked softly while lengths of pure white hair turned iridescent in the starlight. Srina took in the shifting abyss.

The shadowed form of Darth Empyrean was standing not far away. Such a construct should have brought a sense of humility or fear, but the City of Dreams was an extension of all that she knew. There was nothing to be afraid of. This place knew its creator, moreover, so did she. Everything he was echoed in these obsidian halls, and it was a luxury, perhaps, that only she could call that presence home. His name spoken alone was a gravity well…But this place? Vash'karath? It was…Everything.

Srina knew the depths of Empyrean's will, the clarity of his vision, even if there were certain things they didn't see eye to eye on. This was a place that she had felt the shape of long before it had been willed into existence. She had spoken to him in dreams. Walked beside him, in silence. Her gaze lifted, and gold-hewn orbs settled on the center of the Hall where the void sang to her the loudest. The city, if it could even be called that, wasn't built on the backs of the inferior. It hadn't been built at all.

Vash'karath had been born.

Manifested from belief, power, and maddening ambition. Its spires shimmered in her periphery, endless, and ever-changing. Every inch pulsed with a sort of sentience that made one wonder if it was actually alive. Regardless the truth, it remembered.

A ghostly twinge touched the corner of her mouth when she stopped moving beside the Corpse King of the Sith Order. It wasn't quite a smile. It wasn't not a smile—It was something deeper.

"Mmm…I like it here, meldanya."

It was a simple statement that wouldn't mean much given the overwhelming grandeur of where they stood. It was not simply a place, or a city, but scripture that had been written in fire and thought. Srina looked away and found her eyes drawn back to the floor made of distant whispering lights. She was unhurried, unbowed. The stars whispered beneath her, almost joyous, as if they had recognized kin instead of an intruder on their solitude. "Others will come."

"They will marvel…They will fear…They will deny the existence of such a place…", she murmured, softly, aware that many Sith seemed to be changing. Becoming something else. Something new. The constant wars between Shadow and Light had taken their toll, but the goal posts had now moved entirely. It was an adjustment—But, it could only enhance them. Educate them…At least, if it didn't destroy them first. "And once they finish denying it…They will crave it."

Her voice was a cold wind through gilded halls, soft, but final.

Sith could resist many things. The promise of power?

That usually…Wasn't one of them.

 

[Kaila Irons]

Wearing: Robes
Tag: Darth Empyrean Srina Talon | OPEN

Moments earlier...

Anathemous flipped through the ever changing grimoire, setting on a newly forming page as it began writing to her of the dead. A new corpse had been brought into the office for just the occasion, some criminal who'd had the misfortune of firing upon her sister's ceremony and since become but one more tool in her arsenal of research.

Some would have found it puzzling to see a warrior of her stature poured over tomes, broad shoulders hunched as she copied glyphs and runes from forgotten literature.

But ever conqueror needed an army, and the witchblade knew she could no longer rely on brawn alone.

She turned suddenly, brandishing a lightsaber as something made itself known behind her, and yet this was no assassin in her midst nor jedi invader. It was a foreboding sense of familiarity accented in the incomprehensibly alien.

The very stars spoke to her.

"Come and see."

Golden eyes went wide as they stared into a world beyond the stars, a thing of dreams, yet it looked so real that she could reach out and touch it.

. . .

A gloved hand reached into Vash'karath.

Behind it stepped Darth Anathemous, her unnaturally heavy steps rendered both cautious and weightless, and her insatiably curious gaze awestruck by the dark beauty of this arcane world.

She looked down to slide a book into her midnight robes, and her stomach sank.

Better then to look upon those who'd summoned the young lord of Echnos, who's presence in the force she recognized for the oppressive awe they wielded.

"...my Emperor...!" she bowed her gold strewn head to the masters of this world.

"My Empress."

But if they had brought her here, was this to be a boon or a curse? Punishment overdue for actions against the Kainites, Or a reckoning, for the affections so tenderly shared with their daughter?

She dared not ask.

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