Dark side of the road [Niysha]

[NightSister]

Dagobah​

​

Aria muttered something impolite under her breath as her foot sank into the massive swamp for the third time. She hauled her leg out, gagging at the foul stuff her calf was now covered in, and shook her leg out before carefully walking onto what at least appeared to be dry land. Whatever it was that the Force-imbued planet of Dagobah had to offer, it had better be worth it.

As she so often did, Aria had taken off from Voss to explore, this time heading to Dagobah for its Force-presence and history and whatever else it was that had made her forget about the swamps. She had been mildly apprehensive upon seeing the place for the first time, and still was, but it could have been worse - for starters, she had come very close to sinking her starship when she tried to land. Besides, she was curious about what she would find. Something about the planet was intriguing no doubt, but she really could've done without the slimy stuff.

Her spirits increased once she was further away from the big swamp and after a bit of exploration she was beginning to enjoy herself. The place still gave her the creeps - especially the illustrious Cave of Evil that she was deliberately staying away from - but in a nice way. Like the peaceful feeling one sometimes gets before something bad happens.

[member="Niysha"]

 

[Niysha]

Niysha wandered away from the shuttle she'd managed to procure from the Order, hearing more than Seeing the ramp retract behind her and the engines flare back to life. The pilot didn't want to be on Dagobah, and frankly, a scared worker was an ineffective worker. The Sithling had given him leave to retreat to orbit until she signaled him down. Audio communication might only have been good into low orbit, but simpler data could be pushed further. She'd have an exit within five minutes of whenever she needed it. Whether or not that exit would still be there when Niysha had become so engrossed in her research that it took her literally days to call for pickup was another matter.

Ten, maybe twenty years ago, there was a virus on Dagobah. A hybrid strain of Mnggal-Mnggal and some plague, it had reanimated the dead as slavering beasts dripping with black sludge. The old Sith Empire had suffered a telling loss, and countless corpses still littered the swamps. Fortunately, the virus was long dead. Unfortunately, so was anyone who knew where it came from or why it had been created and released in the first place.

And somewhere in this abominable festering slime-ball of a planet was a little hideaway bunker constructed by a mad scientist that held all of the answers. Niysha hoped to find that bunker. So much hate and fear would be a potent nexus of Dark Side energy, and there was no telling what she could do with it. It was yet another tiny step on her road to building a legitimate Sith power base; she had a long way to go until she could hope to contend with the others in the Order, and fortunately she was weak enough to stay under the radar while she did so.

As her boots sucked and sloshed through the muck of Dagobah's "terrain," the Miraluka kept her mind as focused as possible. This planet was extremely strong in the Force, especially the Dark Side. It was hard to See, at best. Random objects around her were so charged with potential that they had their own auras, which was to say nothing of legitimate (if inconsequentially weak) artifacts scattered at random through the swamp. She'd have the time of her life trying to actually find something of value in this drek-heap.
[member="Aria Vale"]

 

[NightSister]

Spoiler

I am SO sorry I took so long to get to this. You have my absolute OK to be petty from here in as payback

After some more wandering, Aria made her way into a low-roofed cave and sat down for a moment, leaning against the stony walls as she exhaled. No doubt about it, something about the energy on this planet was draining - physically so, of course, due to the swamps one had to wade through to get anywere, but mentally so as well; within an hour of landing on the planet Aria didn't even want to think anymore. Any initial appeal that the Force nexus and whatnot had cloaked the planet in were gone: Aria was waiting to run out of things to explore, at which point she would take off right away.

Grabbing a handful of moss, Aria brushed some of the slimy stuff off of her legs and got back to her feet just as she heard an engine. Somebody else was here? Poor them. She left the cave, gradually making her way back to open land, where the remnants of footprints remained in the mud, though partially covered by slime and...whatever else was layering the ground. Ugh.

So, what next? She had done some research into what the planet had to offer before her departure, though many of its most interesting features offered too much of a glimpse into the Dark Side for Aria's liking; though she had developed a tolerance towards those who used the Darkness, she wouldn't go so far as to say she was comfortable in and around such environments. Could anyone blame her? It had been drilled into her since birth that the Darkness was a scary entity full of evil and suffering; it was almost surprising that she was able to interact with those who used it without a high level of hostility, as opposed to the faint wariness layering the usual respectful regard she attempted to hold all strangers in.

Snapping out of her reverie, Aria decided it wouldn't hurt to explore some of the planet's darker areas - after all, she had done things far more suggestive of a Darksided inclination and remained firmly a Jedi. There was that little bunker she'd read about, hidden somewhere on the planet; it would be a good place to start, Aria thought to herself, withdrawing once again into the shadowed caves and tunnels to try and locate it.

[member="Niysha"]