Azariah
More lost than a Lieutenant on Land Nav
Name: Azariah
Other Forms of Address: the Azazel, Weapon Culexus
Faction: N/A
Rank: N/A
Species: Human
Age: roughly mid-twenties (exact age uncertain)
Gender: Female
Height: 1.68 m (5’ 6”)
Weight: 68 kg (150 lbs)
Eyes: Yellow
Hair: Black
Skin: Fair
Force Sensitivity: Unfortunately, yes
Strengths and Weaknesses (Required: 2 Weaknesses Minimum):
+ Iron Within: Whatever she starts, she will see it through to completion
+ Iron Without: She has been trained for nothing but combat, and is in peak physical shape as a result
~ There is no Such Thing as Innocence: Highly suspicious of anyone’s motivations, with few exceptions
~ Pain is an Illusion of the Senses: Completely disregarding personal injury, she’ll fight until she drops
- Illiterate: Exactly what it sounds like
- Unsociable: Has little to no clue how to act in the company of others
- Abomination: Living beings can’t help but feel uncomfortable around her, as if something about her is straight-up wrong
Appearance:
Brilliantly yellow eyes stare piercingly out of a sculpted, angular face, with fair skin marred by two scars, one cutting across her left cheek from chin to cheekbone, the other smaller and following the right cheekbone. Close-cropped black hair like soot lies loosely combed atop her head, and she wears simple, fitted dark robes, her body underneath littered with scars.
Skills
(Legend: Untrained, Novice, Adept, Proficient, Master)
Combat Skills
Sword
Unarmed
Force Skills
Force Scream
Force Push
Items:
- the Starlit Blade
- slave collar controller
- dark robes
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Legend of the Azazel
written by the hand of Jaiaar Kyras, my lady’s faithful servant
The girl never had even the illusion of choice.First came the Heritor.
The Heritor was old, older than any sentient had any right to be. And the Heritor was powerful, that brand of power that only appears in the hands of the absolutely mad. His many perverse experiments and horrid rituals created unnatural shrines – haunted nexuses – of dark energies, evil and twisted creatures that terrorized the superstitious local peoples. All those works, however, were as smoke to the Heritor. Empty, and devoid of substance.
This ritual, the Heritor was certain, in the warped recesses in his mind, would be his magnum opus. It was not the first time. It might have even been true. His most recent obsession was the effects of corruption, the sulfurous yellowing of the eyes, the paling and mottling of skin and whitening of hair of unnaturally quickened aging. It was no surprise or effort to confirm such unbroken immersion in the Dark Side of the Force would influence a being so. What drove the Heritor to create such ritual as he did is unknown, lost with his death.
But create it he did – a ritual to transfer the effects of a lifetime of Darkness away from its caster. He needed only a sacrifice, an innocent to shoulder the burden. When the Heritor had begun, he had prepared for just such a time as this. Years before, he had descended on a nearby village like a god-king, declaring a young child not yet named as set apart for his purposes. His “Azazel”, in the local tongue. Now came his time to collect.
The ritual was wildly successful. The Force all but seemed to scream at the abomination the Heritor had made of its workings. The Heritor had no time to enjoy it.
Second came the assassin.
The assassin never explained how she came to kill the Heritor. The girl never thought to ask, for she had been taught that to question was to doubt. All that mattered was she had, and in a moment of inspiration taken the young child whose eyes now burned luminously yellow with her, around whom the Force itself screamed in torment and fear. What better way to ensure loyalty, after all, than to bring them up in your shadow?
The girl was given a new title – Culexus – and isolated. Everything she knew came from the assassin; truth and falsity, real and illusion. Disobedience was harshly punished, unquestioning compliance rewarded generously. (For a given value of generous, though it mattered little – the girl knew nothing else.) But the girl was not Sith.
Darth Vanus didn’t want an apprentice; she had enough of those. She wanted a weapon.
Emotions were the provenance of Sith – to lose control of them was disobedience. Knowledge was for Sith to discover – questioning was insubordination. Submission to the demands of Sith was the highest good – hesitation was anathema.
She succeeded beyond her highest expectations. Had the Sith settled on a different penalty for her apprentice, she might have even kept her ‘Weapon’.
Third came the slave, and it was (ironically) the slave which broke the chain.
The assassin had a lover, it was rumored. A lover, blind to the ways of the Force like I and my brothers, who even still displayed such talent with a blaster as to seem nearly as impossible as the lightning storms and blade-dances of the Sith. He sat on Darth Vanus’s council, he was called ‘Vindicare’, and none save she knew his true name.
It was rumored that he played the pivotal role in the punishment that saw me surrendered to Weapon Culexus, convincing Darth Vanus of the merits of this plan. Whispers that after so many years, his conscience was pricked by her state, and he moved in secret to affect her escape. Nothing more than fanciful romanticism by gossiping servants, however well-placed he was to do so.
It is here we leave the realm of story and rumor, for my only recourse until now have been smuggled messages from Vanus’s servants and my lady’s own tales (when she deigns to tell me), and into that of my own memories. Forgive me the presumption of making myself the carriage of this piece, but I have heard it said personal testimony makes for more accurate translation than hearsay.
I was a slave owned by the apprentice Callidus, an infiltrator without peer, and whose exploits (such as were relayed to me) I have recorded elsewhere, though I was forced to abandon them in my lady’s exodus. The main task to which I was purposed, however, was research. Customs, fashions, histories and legends, well-known and little.
Then one day, Callidus called for me, and even I – Force-blind as I am – could sense her rage. With my collar’s controller in her hand, I feared the worst, but she simply demanded I follow her. She led me to a chamber, within which was a table at which three figures sat, with a chair for a fourth. Darth Vanus, at the table’s head, commanded Callidus to surrender the controller to Weapon Culexus, whom I had not noticed standing behind the Master’s chair. Silently fuming, she did so. This, Darth Vanus proclaimed, was punishment for using Weapon Culexus without her permission.
I remember the way my lady stared at the controller in her open palm – quizzically, as if she had no clue what to do with it.
My lady unnerved me with her presence, a whisper of unnaturality pervading the very air around her at what I came to learn was her most controlled. My mind shudders to recall when she was not, and I’ll not recount it here. Long did she hold me in suspicion, and long was I questioned, in the privacy of the spartan catacombs she called her home. Who was I, what was my purpose, among others. For while my lady is not possessed of a classic education, she is not unintelligent – to question Sith was forbidden, but none cared what she asked of a slave.
It never occurred to me my answers might be challenging everything my lady had been told to believe. It never occurred to Darth Vanus, either. Over time, my lady grew troubled, and her questions became…introspective, harder to answer. The nature of freedom, of choice, what made someone a slave. How she hid such doubts from her master I do not know, but I am all the more impressed for it.
Yesterday, my lady decided she’d had enough. So I assume, at any rate. My lady has spoken only five words to me: “Pack your things. We’re leaving.”
I didn’t question her. It did not take long. I do not have much in the way of possessions. My lady has even less.
Our exit was profoundly anticlimactic. Darth Vanus had trained her servants all to well. None dared question the Weapon Culexus as she strode toward the hangar bay, nor as she demanded a shuttle to the Smuggler’s Moon. The flight passed in silence, my lady’s gaze never wavering from the pilot’s seat. His obvious unease was mildly amusing, I must admit.
As I draw this to a close, we make our final descent towards Nar Shaddaa. I know not what plan my lady has in store, but I do know I shall be there to chronicle its every step. Force willing, I shall even live to see its completion.
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Role-Play List
Breaking the Chain
[member="Azariah"]
