Igni Irae
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
Intent: To act as a major opponent.
Image Credit: Created via AI Creator Studio. The links do not seem to lead directly to the created images, just to the tool. Prompt: 'Sith Lady in her sixties in covering military uniform with medals, angular face, short hair, wrinkles, piercing blue eyes, thin and slender Star Wars, scifi, Imperial'.
Role: Opposition | Imperial Warlord | Sith Lord
Permissions: N/A
Links: Tephrike, Prosperity Quarter, Hope Falls, The Valkyrie's Diary, Adlerberg, Dominion of Light, Republican Guard, Into Darkness, After Darkness, Glorious Conflict, Kyriaki, Castle Maysaf, Yuuzhan Vong, At Home In The Cobwebs & The Lies, Sentinel's Rest.
PHYSICAL INFORMATION
Age: Sixties
Force Sensitivity: Master
Species: Human
Appearance: Lachesis is a tall human female in late middle age. She is thin with an angular face. Aging has not left her features untouched, she is wrinkled and her skin has sagged. However, she is slender and fit. Her appearance is deceptively innocent, in stark contrast to what she actually is. She has piercing blue eyes. Her hair is neat and immaculate, as are her clothes. Lachesis will commonly wear a suit, simple but elegant robes with a tunic or a dark grey military uniform. She does not wear a lot of jewellry. Her right arm was ritually cut off by the Vaderites in a ceremony. It has been replaced with a sleek, cybernetic prothesis. Unlike many Vaderite high society ladies, Lachesis has elected to keep the 'crude' prothesis instead of replace it with something more 'physically appealing' since it is useful for combat. She lost her left arm in a duel with her former master Darth Temis. It has likewise been replaced with a prothesis. The artificial limbs are sturdy, and increase her strength.
SOCIAL INFORMATION
Name: Darth Lachesis. Her birth name is Isidora Manatos.
Nicknames:
- The Butcher of Chios
- The 'Lady of Steel'
- Auntie Lachesis
- Member of the Grand Council of Humanism
- KEC Lord Commander and General of the KEC
- National Leader of the Humanist People's Party
- Imperial Minister of Reclamation
- Imperial Commissioner for the Strengthening of Humanism
- Master of the Disciples of the Vader
Wealth: Lachesis is a Sith Lord and a senior Imperial administrator. The government she serves is totalitarian and thus extremely corrupt and cleptocratic. There are virtually no checks on a leader's ability to exploit the people and natural resources in their domain. Lachesis makes a show out of having an austere private life to contrast with the likes of Eisen, who is the very embodiment of nouveau riches garishness. Tephrike is almost totally isolated from the interstellar economic system and what currency is used on the planet would be worthless outside of it. However, it has extensive natural resources and she has carte blanche to requisition what she needs unless she encroaches upon the patrimony of another grandee. Someone in her position can easily seize the property and assets of 'enemies of the state'.
As a Sith, Lachesis does not pay taxes. It is not uncommon for Non-Force-Using businessowners to approach Sith for property stacking schemes to avoid taxes. How this works is that they found a shell company with the Sith as nominal head. The Sith is well compensated for this via bribery but it still works to the advantage of the Non-Force-Users with big portfolios. There is the danger of the Sith trying to seize it despite legally being unable, but political power would come to their aid since everyone does it and other Sith don't want their golden cows to get butchered. She is the nominal 'head' of various companies, from an art gallery to a munitions factory to a nerf farm. None of these have galactic reach since they are limited to Tephrike, but they provide her with a cash cow.
Notable Possessions: A heavily annotated copy of Glorious Conflict, the ideological manifesto of the Humanist People's Party. It is bound with Twi'lek skin. Dictated by Darth Malitia, the book postulates that mankind is a superior species and the sole civilisation builder in the universe. Furthermore, it claims that the original Force-Users were humans. According to it, aliens were only gained the ability to use the Force by breeding with human Force-Users who violated the 'primordial law' of only breeding with their own species. This is, of course, all absurd, but the Vaderites treat this piece of garbage as gospel. Furthermore, it claims Vader was the Sith'ari and the true Dark Lord, who ascended to godhood after his son and the false Emperor betrayed him. She owns the Cross of Imperial Glory, one of the highest decorations awarded by the Greater Sith Imperium, the Golden Party Badge and the Blood Order. The last two are special awards given to distinguished Party members. Lachesis has a villa in Adlerberg and a large estate on the island of Chios. She owns a Force Imbued Blade, Sith Sword and a Cloak of Hate.
Skills: Darth Lachesis is a Master of the Dark Side of the Force, with a profound knowledge of many abilities typically associated with Sith. She has a strong command of Telekinesis, Force Drain, Force Weapon, Darkshear, Force Insanity, Force Stasis, Tutaminis, Consume Essence, Dominate Mind as as well as telepathy and physical enhancement abilities. Moreover, she is a skilled bladeswoman. She is no longer young, but aging has not dulled her senses or reflexes. Lightsabres are incredibly rare on Tephrike, and so most Force-Users utilise Force Imbued Blades or Sith Swords.
Lachesis has a lot of experience in administration. She is adept at both strategic and bureaucratic administration. While no genius, Lachesis is a capable military commander. She is no savant of warfafre, but effective at her job and has a lot of experience in combined arms warfare. Lachesis is inured to hardship, but does value 'pure human stock'. By contrast, she is very cavalier when it comes to using 'mongrel auxiliaries' as cannon fodder. She can operate ground vehicles such as tanks, speeders and armoured personnel carriers.
Languages: She knows Basic, which is her mother tongue. She is way too speciesist to learn alien languages.
Personality:
Elpsis: I think they [the Republican Guard] mentioned a Darth Lachesis once. Something about wanting a hit on her. Name ring a bell?
Diona: There was once an island called Chios. People from various species dwelt on it. When the Vaderites took control, they were at first content to oppress the non-humans and pit them against each other. Then Lachesis was made governor-general. Today, only humans live there.
Elpsis: Where are the aliens?
Diona: Gone.
Elpsis: You mean deported and enslaved?
Diona: No, gone. Every man, woman and child was slaughtered. She built resorts on their ashes. 'Model' workers go there.
Elpsis: They’ll be avenged. The guilty must burn.
"Speciesism is exactly the same as delousing. Getting rid of lice is not a question of ideology, it is a matter of cleanliness. In just this same way speciesism for us has not been a question of ideology but a matter of cleanliness."
"Whether other peoples live in prosperity or starve to death interests me only in so far as we need them as slaves for our culture: otherwise it is of no interest to me. Whether ten thousand Gungans fall down from exhaustion while digging a trench me only in so far as the trench for the Imperium is finished. We shall never be tough and heartless where it is not necessary, that is clear. We, Humans, who are the only people in the world who have a decent attitude towards animals, will also assume a decent attitude towards these sub-sentient creatures. But it is a crime against our blood to worry about them and give them ideals, thus causing our sons and grandsons to have a more difficult time with them."
"The Supreme Leader has ordered that Charowa be defended at all costs. If the corps remains, it will be caught in a cauldron and annihilated. Every soldier must be ready to die for the fatherland, but his life must not be spent carelessly. I am ordering a breakout. I assume personal responsibility for this order."
"Be an example to your soldiers in your duty and in private life. Never spare yourself, and let the troops see that you don't, in your endurance of fatigue and privation."
"The Disciples of the Vader are a Humanist order of soldiers of mankind and a community of their clans bound together by oath . What we want for Tephrike is a ruling class destined to last for centuries and the product of repeated selection, a new aristocracy continuously renewed from the best of the sons and daughters of our nation, representing eternal youth for our nation."
"I believe, gentlemen, that you know me well enough to know that I am not a bloodthirsty person; I am not a woman who takes pleasure or joy when something rough must be done. However on the other hand, I have such good nerves and such a developed sense of duty – I can say that much for myself – that when I recognise something as necessary I can implement it without compromise. For the protection of future generations, the matter of the xenos of Chios has been resolved. I did not consider myself entitled to allow future generations of xenos to become the murderers of our children and grandchildren. That would have been cowardly. Consequently, the matter was resolved without compromise."
- Darth Lachesis
Member of the Grand Council, Minister of Reclamation, Imperial Commissioner for the Strengthening of Humanism - Lachesis is a woman of many titles. Her office has the mandate to direct the colonisation of 'reclaimed' territories with human settlers, the repatriation and integration of humans coming from outside Vaderite territory and the elimination of 'harmful influence' on the part of populations alien to the human species.
In the hands of someone else, this might have been a job for pen-pushers. However, Lachesis has given taken advantage of the free hand given to Vaderite leaders, as well as the complete absence of legal constraints. When she finds herself in conflict with other Imperial authorities, she is energetic to the point of brutality. She made her mark in some of the more troublesome provinces of the Imperium, where she carried out a relentless campaign of Humanisation. At the same time, she proved adept at encouraging the natives to fight each other before deporting them. She turned an island she was administering into a tourism hot spot. Ghost cities dot the countryside, but the tourists at the resorts are shielded from the sight. The colonists adore her, and she has built a cult of personality.
Lachesis is part of the Vaderite 'old guard'. Indeed, she is related to Darth Hyperion, a former Supreme Leader. This makes her Humanist nobility. She is a special case among the Vaderite leaders in Party and State because she dislikes the slave economy. But she does not see it as immoral, just decadent. The big corporations prefer to prefer employ enormous numbers of alien slaves because they are cheaper than humans. Thus they reduce the common human worker's earnings. Because of the extensive slave system, many workers find it difficult to find gainful employment. Well-off Party members have grown used to slaves catering to their every whim and refuse to do work they consider beneath them.
Some Humanists have even forgotten the blood purity laws, arguing that certain 'near-humans' should be given better treatment. Some aliens may be needed in order to complete menial tasks. Others may survive in the desert and the polar regions that are not worth colonising. All the good land will be redistributed among loyal humans, who will live wholesome lives. Lachesis likes to go on inspections when a province fails to achieve results. She prides herself on her ability to set things right. When it comes to the ongoing conflict with the Dominion and the Guard, Lachesis favours a more aggressive course. She has built a following among the war hawks.
In terms of demeanour, Lachesis is self-righteous, prideful, belligerent, self-important and manipulative. She affects a faux motherly tone when dealing with subordinates. She is known for her sharp, acidic tongue and dry wit. Lachesis cannot stand lies or excuses, which is awfully ironic. She has high expectations of her fellow Disciples and Party officials and is quick to punish or dress-down those who do fall short of the standards set for the 'master race'. Lachesis can be charming, but has a foul temper and a vindictive temperament. Dogged and capable of meticulous attention to detail, she has taken a leading role in many of the Vaderites' atrocities. At the same time, she has cultivated a network of governors and officers who want to ride to power on her coattails.
It goes without saying that she is extremely racist and an unrepentant human supremacist. This is, of course, the foundation of the Humanist world view. She sincerely believes in the principles of Humanism and is dead-set on 'Humanising' Tephrike. Lachesis has a sense of humour, albeit a rather dark one, and is fond of vicious barbs. She is a strong believer in the power of terror and fear. Lachesis has developed a deeply conspiratorial view of the world. She is the type to hold on to deep, personal grudges and leverage the political and economic resources at her disposal to settle them in her favour.
She takes Humanism's Social Darwinist precepts seriously and believes that renewed military adventures will combat the scourges of complacency, corruption and 'degeneration of the species'. This also means that she is ultimately blinded by ideology. Lachesis feels deep contempt for democracy and regards the Disciples as a meritocracy because they 'empower the strong' and 'genetically worthy'. Power belongs to those who command the Force, and do not let the Force command them. At the same time believes that dark forces are threatening this purported 'racial utopia'.
While the Vaderites do not exclude women from the Disciples or the armed forces, there is a strand of sexism in their movement. Lachesis has refused to be confined to a menial position on the account of her gender, and Vaderites who try to put her down have learned that this is extremely perilous. She detests the patriarcha culture and has become something of a patron for women trying to rise in the civil service, armed forces or Disciples. However, she is just as capable of being cruel to women who do not meet her standards for ideological purity, whose lineage she regards as tainted or whom she considers too 'soft'. For all her deeply unpleasant - and utterly reprehensible - traits, Lachesis is someone who does not just rule through fear. She respects humans who are brave, ideologically and 'pure'. She is utterly uncaring of the lives of aliens or ideologically 'impure' humans, but shows a lot of care when it comes to pure human soldiers. She is more than willing to listen to their concerns and commiserate with soldiers who have lost comrades and loved ones once battle has been concluded.
For this reason, she has soldiers who follow her out of devotion because she does not risk them unnecessarily. Pragmatism - as well as honest concern for their well-being - has motivated her to provide veterans who have had trouble adjusting to civilian life with land grants and settling them on her estates. She has founded her own special division composed of soldiers raised in her home areas. To their children, she is not a monster to be feared, but their kind 'Auntie Lachesis' who gives them treats and protects them from the evil xenos. As a Sith Lord, Lachesis is extremely well-off by Tephriki standards. However, though she's older now she cultivates the view that she lives and eats with the soldiers. Today, this mainly applies to the officers, but she does not reside in palaces or mansions while she's on campaign.
She is deeply distrustful of allowing 'worthy' near-humans to join the Imperium as second-class citizens and 'honorary humans', viewing them as tainted by their 'alien blood'. Lachesis has reluctantly helped Darth Eisen seize power and crown himself Supreme Leader of the Greater Sith Imperium. Her reasons for this are opportunistic, as she deeply dislikes him. In her view, he is a corrupt sybarite whose understanding of the tenets of Humanism is lacking. She also believes he is not aggressive enough against the Vaderites' main enemies, the Republican Guard and the Dominion. It is, however, in her interests to back him...for now.
Kyriaki and Lachesis get on poorly. Lachesis views the clone as beneath since she regards clones as inferior duplicates or 'fleshdroids' - and this one is the clone of a space woman. In addition, she dislikes that Eisen seems to favour her. However, in the end Kyriaki is a small fish who cannot hope to match Lachesis in raw Force power. Lachesis alternates between being chilly and giving her patronising advice on how to be a good Disciple and navigate the treacherous politics of the patriarchal, totalitarian Vaderite state. She has a good relationship with Sibylla Laskaris, her apprentice.
Lachesis is unmarried. Marrying and having children puts a Vaderite woman somewhat under the dominion of her husband among the chauvinistic Vaderites. She has occasional lovers though. Lachesis has a bastard son called Timon. Much to her disappointment, he is a Non-Force-User. However, he is capable and dedicated, so she is not cruel to him. He works for the Vaderites as an intelligence agent, and she is proud of his accomplishments. She reacts angrily when other Vaderite Sith disparage him for his lack of Force-Sensitivity.
COMBAT INFORMATION
Weapon of Choice: Blade | The Force | Minions.
Combat Function: Lachesis is a Sith Lord and strong both in the Force and the arts of combat. She is a Master of the Dark Side who can call upon a variety of destructive powers. Lachesis adept in hanging back and using the Force to smite opponents, but can also wade into the fray and cut them down close-up. She blends bladework with use of the Force to outmanoeuvre and crush an opponent. However, Lachesis is not a young woman anymore and thus not that fast or agile. She can use the Force to compensate for this and increase her speed, but this obviously takes energy. She lacks talent for healing, though she has a high tolerance for pain. Lachesis does not wear heavy armour and lacks a lightsabre. The latter are incredibly rare on Tephrike. This weakens her defences against ranged attacks. That said, as a prominent Disciple of the Vader, Lachesis will usually have soldiers with her. She has a military background and is a capable battlefield commander. This means that she will generally be commanding her minions from a position where she can oversee things. However, she is not afraid to wade into combat when needed.
Force Abilities: She has a strong command of Telekinesis, Force Drain, Force Weapon, Darkshear, Force Insanity, Force Stasis, Tutaminis, Consume Essence, Dominate Mind as as well as telepathy and physical enhancement abilities.
Strengths:
- As a Master of the Force and an experienced warrior Lachesis is a strong combatant. She is skilled with both blade and the Force and able to call upon the destructive power of the dark side to smite her foes.
- Lachesis emits an aura of authority, invoking fear and awe alike from her subordinates and terrifying her foes. She is a competent battlefield commander who can inspire courage and fear through her resolve.
- Lachesis keeps fit, but is not a young woman anymore and this has affected her physicality. She can use the Force to boost herself and compensate, but her advanced age means she simply is not that fast anymore and gets tired more quickly than a younger combatant would.
- Like many Sith Lords, Lachesis is very arrogant, prideful and overconfident. She literally regards herself as a 'superhuman' and superior to most beings. However, she takes it a step further due to her speciesism. This can prove disadvantageous in combat.
- Lacks experience with a lightsabre. Likewise, Lachesis is inexperienced with space travel, as she has never left her planet's atmosphere.
Tephrike has been isolated from the rest of the Galaxy since the outbreak of the Gulag Virus. Originally colonised during the twilight years of the Old Republic, it was subjugated by the Galactic Empire. The human supremacist regime established by the Empire was overthrown with the aid of the Rebel Alliance and the planet emerged as an unstable, multi-species federation.
Then the Gulag Virus sent the Galaxy spiralling into chaos. Warlords, Jedi, Sith and rebels vied for power. Prolonged warfare and the use of primitive weapons of mass destruction brought great devastation to the planet. Benign intentions turned to evil over time. Jedi who sought to restore order and reunite the planet fell to the darkness they claimed to oppose, while still believing that their intentions and actions were good. In so doing, they followed in the footsteps of Atris and Joruus C'boath. Believing that they alone could lead Tephrike out of the darkness, they created a theocratic dictatorship.
Renegade Jedi established a Sith cult called the Disciples of the Vader, for they idolised the long-dead Vader as a god and believed it was his will to enslave all those who could not wield the Force and were not human. The Republican Guard, a faction that glorified the Old Republic and staunchly opposed Force-users, was founded by disgruntled clone slave-soldiers and minority species that declared war on both Force cults. In between these three extremes, several smaller factions tried to carve out a niche for themselves. The planet was locked in stasis, divided by riven groups trying to recall a past they did not remember. Here, the dark age never ended.
The Disciples of the Vader were rounded by a fallen Jedi Knight called Cade Seward. Thrust into command at a young age, he fell to the dark side. A vision convinced him that Darth Vader had chosen him as his champion to eclipse the light. For Vader had experienced apotheois and was now a Dark God. Indeed, the Gulag Virus had been a machination of the dark side to cleanse the Galaxy of weakness. Cade chose the name Darth Malitia, though his enemies called him Darth Menace, and was able to assemble an army that became a serious threat to the Dominion. His dark crusade was halted at Palmyra, Tephrike's old capital. But victory came at a staggering cost for the Dominion, for the city was turned into a cursed, dark side nexus.
But the Vaderite threat did not vanish. The Sith managed to carve out their own state. It was built upon a foundation of slavery, human supremacism, and tyranny. Humans who professed faith into the Vaderite religion were coopeted as a new middle class and given preferential treatment. They became the soldiers, officers, administrators and technicians of the new regime and were organised in the Humanist Party, a political machine responsible for the promotion of Vaderite ideology. Meanwhile, aliens were enslaved, confined to ghettos or exterminated. Rule of the strong was enshrined in the Vaderite's Sith ideology, for there could be no place in the New Order for those deemed weak, mentally or physically defective. The Sith remained at war with the Dominion and the Republican Guard, seeking to bring all of Tephrike under their jackboot.
This was the world Lachesis grew up in. Her birth name was Isidora Manatos. Her family came from a lesser branch of a more influential clan. Her family, though respectable landowners from the Junker class, were quite poor. They had alien 'servants' and an estate, but it was in a poor state. Indeed, they were dependent on financial support from their wealthier relatives. However, her parents were faithful to the glorious Sith cause, and so Isidora was given an orthodox education. Like every good human child, she joined the Damsels of the Divine St Padmé, the girls' wing of the Imperial Youth Corps which indoctrinated children and teenagers, and organised leisure activities. Isidora enjoyed the strenuous outdoors and sports activities, the campfire romanticism and even the time spent helping out farmers in the countryside. But she hated the patriarchal culture that permeated the group. Young girls were pushed to regard themselves above all as future wives and homemakers and be subservient to their husbands.
Once she reprimanded a teacher for making the class reading a book called 'The Merchant of Alderaan'. She took offence at a passage where a Twi'lek merchant said: "If you prick us do we not bleed." In her view it implied that Twi'leks were sentient beings like humans. She declared that they should not be studying this book. The teacher, having not realised how dangerously close she had been to corrupting her pupils, got scared and agreed, assuring her student that she would discuss this with school staff. Isidora acquired a lasting interest in army matters when she and other girls from her unit organised a celebration for soldiers returning home from campaign. She managed to briefly get herself assigned to an auxiliary anticraft unit, where she was supervised by Skyhammer Fleet soldiers. She operated searchlights, and later a flak cannon during air raids on a Vaderite town on the mainland.
Her paternal grandparents had been obsessed with attaining the elevated status of the Disciples. Having failed to manifest Force talents of their own, they made their son undergo various alchemical trials. But these trials failed to produce any positive result and indeed took a toll on his health. He had a solid, but unexceptional military career before retiring to manage the family estate. Part of the reason for the family's lack of influence was that they had produced a lot of Non-Force-Users. Isidora was the first Force adept for a couple of generations. As a result, it was a cause of celebration for the family when a test revealed that she was Force-Sensitive. This produced high expectations. These made made her prideful and arrogant, but also desperate to succeed.
It was the law that all human Force-Users in the Imperium had to become Disciples. By contrast, alien Force-Users were to be killed. So young Isidora joined the pompously named Academy of the Scions of the Vader. The academy was located in a remote swamp filled with dangerous creatures. This protected it from attack, but also made it difficult for wayward students to escape. Students were often sent out to test themselves against the beasts of the swamp. Once people had lived in the swamp lands, but they had been deported to a desert.
Isidora performed well in her studies and in her Force training, though not exceptionally so. She was humiliated when she lost a duel against a star student and was left with scars. However, her skills in cunning allowed her to sabotage potential rivals and she was very determined. One of her teachers noticed this and urged her to focus on her Force skills rather than the purely physical. Isidora took these lessons to heart. During the course of her studies, she started to take an interest in military matters and attended classes on them. She eventually managed to become an important part of a small circle of students who, like her, lacked the privileged background of acolytes who came from 'noble' families that had produced Disciples for generations. Officially, all Disciples were equal because they were all the heirs of Vader and the vanguard of mankind, but in practice there were firm class distinctions between the 'old' and 'new' blood. Moreover, she had to deal with sexism, as the Humanist movement was quite chauvinistic.
By the time she left the Academy she had acquired a reputation for ability, but also for a not so great one untrustworthiness. Around this time her third cousin Lord Hyperion took an interest in her. He was older and from the branch of the family that had spawned many Force-Users. Isidora was eager to impress her relative, though she found him patronising. However, her hopes for elevation were dashed when she was put in charge of running some of the clan's estates. This was a lucrative position, but a bit of a dead end for someone of her ability. However, it did give her skills in properly manipulating and working the 'xenos'. At the same time, it made her resent the aliens more because they were indirectly blocking her path to power. Isidora often personally inspected the estates, adminstering punishment to corrupt human oversees and 'lazy, uppity xenos' alike. Isidora was careful with money.
Indeed, she earned a reputation for being parminonious. Her inspections were ruthless and unforgiving. She publicly humiliated a cousin whom she considered an insufficiently ruthless manager. Moreover, he had had an affair with an alien servant. She had him whipped and the servant shot. Her treatment of the alien workers was cruel. Isidora wanted to squeeze them dry, while offering them just enough incentives to make them believe that obeying her and reporting others would spare them. Isidora came to dislike the omnipresence of alien 'servants'. She eliminated many of the few freedoms the 'workers' possessed, while increasing the quotas they were expected to fulfil. the Increasingly, she started hiring poor or unemployed humans, including wounded veterans who had trouble finding a job after leaving military service. As Isidora noticed, it was cheaper for megacorps and land barons to utilise alien slave labour. In that regard, she actually displayed a social conscience since she tried to help people the system had failed....but only if they were 'pure' humans.
She was a virulent racist who took it as gospel that aliens were mentally inferior to humans, yet also dangerous. When a more senior relative pointed out that she was working the 'indentured assets' too hard, Isidora chided her for having forgotten that they should only worry about people of their own blood. Her cruel methods triggered a workers' uprising. The revolt was backed by Republican Guard partisans, who provided the rebels with arms, volunteers and training.
Isidora ruthlessly crushed the revolt. To this end, she organised the humans she had settled on the lands in a militia. These irregulars proved surprisingly effective. The core of them was composed of veterans and they were promised land in return for good service, so they were very motivated. Isidora lacked leadership experience, but learned quickly and took advice from experienced veterans. She took part in the fighting herself and visited wounded soldiers. During one fight she was injured by a shot through the jaw, but carried on, drawing upon her pain and the power of the Dark Side until the battle had been concluded.
She gave the order that for every human soldier killed, a hundred aliens would be slaughtered. Her militia was exhorted to make 'salient examples' of civilians suspected of hiding rebels or providing them with supplies. Among other things, this involved wiping out a Togruta village whose residents had been given some token 'autonomy' in return for providing forced labourers and tribute. Her brutality aroused the ire of some of her relatives - not because they had any moral problems with savagely massacring innocent people, but because they saw it as a waste of economic assets. After all, they needed all those slaves to do the work they did not want to do themselves. Moreover, she had disregarded orders from above. This made her position as manager untenable. Hyperion remained aloof from the bickering.
However, her zeal attracted the attention of a Sith Lord. To a significant degree, politics in the Imperium were based on patronage. Senior leaders who had the right combination of energy, zeal and brutality were issued broad authority to implement the directives of Humanism...and vie for power and the favour of the Supreme Leader. Her patron's name was Darth Temis. She was a powerful female Sith Lord who despised the chauvinistic methods of the Disciples' leadership. She passed that on to Lachesis, though the latter was more strategic about it than her master. Temis had derived her name from a female spirit in Tephriki mythology that was supposed to embody the aspect of the virgin huntress. While Temis was no virgin, she stayed aloof from relationships, refusing to get married or have children. This was frowned upon by other Vaderites, as the 'master race' needed to propagate itself in order to spread across all of Tephrike.
Isidora wanted to fight the enemies of Humanism and make a name for herself. Acting on Temis' advice, she joined the Knights of the Ebon Claw (KEC), in which Temis held a high rank in. The KEC had started out as a small guard unit responsible for the protection of the Supreme Leader, but had expanded massively since then. By now it was a parallel army and police force. Highly elitist, it regarded itself as the vanguard of Humanism. Isidora was quickly given a commission. Sith were, after all, seen as superior beings. However, she retained her attitude of eating alongside the soldiers and sharing their trials. Temis watched her career closely, providing instruction. She drove her apprentice hard in duels and on campaigns. Many of their bouts left Isidora injured and in pain, but she felt like she was learning something.
Initially, Isidora was deployed against the Republican Guard. She gained a brutal reputation for levelling camps and villages for supposedly backing the partisans. Indeed, she court-martialled a platoon commander for refusing to carry out her instructions to shoot hostages. However, though she distinguished herself, anti-partisan warfare - which often went hand in hand with ethnic cleansings - did not satisfy her. She hated aliens, but considered herself more of a big picture fighter. The Dominion was a bigger target and so success against them offered more prestige. Thus she was eventually able to arrange a transfer. Conflict between the two powers was heating up again and so she served under Temis. She made a name for herself as a daring, hard-driving commander. Isidora was no savant of warfare, but solid and fearless under fire.
She sometimes carried out reconnaissance missions herself and often utilised deception to deceive the enemy about the true strength of her troops. In one engagement, she led a perilous river crossing. Enemy suppression fire initially thwarted it. Isidora brought up tanks and flak units to carry out counter-fire. Nearby houses were set on fire to obfuscate her movements via a smoke-screen. Infantry were sent across the river in simplistic boats. Isidora personally grabbed a rotary cannon to fight off a counter-attack led by heavy armour, and waded into the water herself to encourage the engineers and get pontoons together. Her telekinetic powers helped her cover them. The crossing was successful.
She struck down the Jedi commander despite serious injury. She was especially satisfied about this because it was an alien and a former Padawan of Master Mahtara, the Battlemaster of the Windian Jedi. Ignoring protocol, Isidora drove on to take a nearby Dominion town despite not being ordered to do so. For a while she was out of contact with high command due to the speed of her offensive. The Imperial media reported a great success, celebrating the 'liberation of fellow humans from xenos Jedi tyranny', and left out any mention of massacres of Dominion POWs or civilians by her troops. Her troops ruthlessly implemented the criminal Confessor Order, which dictated that any Confessor identified among captured Dominion troops be summarily executed. The same applied to captured alien Jedi.
She was given a division command after her commanding officer was killed by a Dominion barrage. Her rise was not atypical for the KEC, as it sought leaders who were ruthless, brutal and ready to lead from the front. Meanwhile, Hyperion had risen in power and influence. The incumbent Supreme Leader was old and ill, but still clinging to power. Then the dictator collapsed and went into a coma. His body was not yet cold, but this triggered a struggle for the succession. Isidora had a complicated relationship with her distant cousin, but saw an opportunity and did not like disorder. After months of heavy fighting, her troops were on leave to give them time to recover.
However, Isidora was able to get in touch with Hyperion, who was amassing support. She brought tanks to Skywalker House, where deliberations were taking place. But Temis had uncovered the conspiracy and she was backing a faction opposed to Hyperion's ascent. Rather than strike Isidora down, she challenged her - not out of pride but to prove to her followers who was the stronger. It was a formal Kaggath. Isidora was badly injured during the duel, losing her right arm, but ultimately prevailed. Temis did not try to cheat or run away when it was clear she had lost. It meant she had trained a stronger student and her work would be in good hands. So she accepted her death, though not warning her former student that she too would always have to be on her guard and that only the strong could rule. When Temis was slain, her followes swore allegiance to her ex-apprentice.
Hyperion acceded to the throne. His first order of business, other than 'dealing' with anyone who might have opposed his accession to supreme authority, was to dispense patronage to his supporters. As is inevitable with an authoritarian or totalitarian regime, the Vaderites' political culture was characterised by mafia-like patronage networks and pervaded by corruption. He named Isidora a Lord and made her governor of the island of Chios. It was the place she had grown up on and where she had earned her spores as a manager.
Isidora returned to Chios a changed woman. It was part of a general trend towards radicalisation in the regime. With Vaderite armies on the march, extremist factions were ascendant at the court of the new Leader. Faced with revolts and unrest, Isidora initiated ethnic cleansings. She considered the 'reservations' inefficient and the ghettos breeding grounds of disease and rebellion. For a while she played cat and mouse with riven alien factions. But her campaign soon turned into full-blown xenocide. Group by group, aliens were rounded up. She took advantage of the outbreak of a pandemic. In the end, even collaboration did not save them. They worked to death, then slaughtered. She had Hyperion's blessing, as he was a purist. After perpetrating this horrible genocide against the native Togrutas, Gungans and Nautolans, she founded a settler colony for veterans called Sentinel's Rest near the premises of a dismantled extermination camp.
She encouraged the settlement of humans, especially of veterans and their families, in the territories that had been 'reclaimed' from aliens. She stipulated that enterprises who set up shop here had to utilise human labour. This drastically altered the demographic makeup of the island. When the Darth title was bestowed on her, she called herself Darth Lachesis. To the Dominion and the Republican Guard, she was known as the Butcher. She worked closely with Darth Furcht, the sociopathic, fanatical leader of the KEC.
Though she eventually resigned from her position to return to leading troops on the front, she maintained a strong connection to Chios. Though Lachesis had many suitors, she refused to marry. Meanwhile, the war was heating up again. The Vaderites initiated an aerial bombing campaign against the Dominion. It was led by the conniving and greedy Darth Eisen. Fierce battles were fought on land and sea. Lachesis returned to the battlefield, but Dominion resistance was determined and zealous. Reports of Vaderite atrocities, spread by refugees from places such as Chios, stiffened the enemy's resolve. Even the Republican Guard started focusing many of its attacks on the Vaderites, given the Dominion a temporary reprieve.
After notable successes in the field, the Vaderites' air force suffered setbacks. However, when it attacked a major Dominion stronghold, the Jedi activated a weather control machine. The Sith bombers got taken down by Jedi aces who had Force melded to move through the storm. Eisen ordered the bombers to continue their attack despite the weather and the fighters were unable to keep formation, so the bombers suffered disastrous losses.
It was a major humiliation. The situation was exacerbated by the Dominion dropping some bombs on the Sith capital. Lachesis quarelled with Eisen about insufficient air support. She was a bit unfair in her judgement because Eisen had wanted to focus bombing raids on military targets, but Hyperion ordered him to 'grind the Dominion into dust' by carpet bombing cities. Bomber losses were high, as were casualties on the ground.
Lachesis' troops managed to take a strategically important city called Chazowa with her tank corps, after managing to outflank the enemy. House-to-house fighting was very fierce. However, then the situation turned critical because a Dominion counter-offensive threatened cut them off. The Dominion sought to envelope the city, with the ultimate objective of pinning the Vaderite troops against the sea. Hyperion ordered that the city be held at all costs.
However, Lachesis feared her troops being encircled and cut off. She had no qualms about butchering the 'impure' and 'undesirables' without mercy, but saw little purpose in pointlessly sacrificing 'pure' human blood. Air support and airdrops that had been promised did not materialise due to a combination of a lack of transport capabilities, hazardous weather conditions and Dominion airpower. Supplies of food, ammunition etc. were running low. Lachesis ate the same rations as the common soldiers. Indeed, sometimes she went without sustenance entirely, using the Force to sustain herself.
Lachesis contacted army group command to ask to evacuate. However, the marshal backed up Hyperion, before finally giving Lachesis a noncommittal response that passed the buck to her, but gave no guarantees that they would receive support during a breakout. So Lachesis ordered the breakout herself, defying the Leader. There was a heavy fog and the Dominion was shelling the streets. But Lachesis used her powers to guide lost soldiers to safety. Dominion troops kept harassing the Vaderites until they reached friendly lines. Lachesis took charge of the rearguard during the fighting retreat. Her actions made her very popular among her troops. Hyperion was angry when he heard the news.
Lachesis stood her ground though. The Vaderite army group was eventually able to inflict a defeat upon the overextended Dominion troops by luring them into a trap. Though under orders to bypass Chazowa, the desire for vindication proved too strong for Lachesis and she took the city. Her troops took the city after savag house-to-house fighting, at the cost of high casualties. However, the subsequent Operation Citadel, which led to one of the largest tank battles in Tephriki history, ended in a Dominion victory.
Hyperion relieved Lachesis and several other generals of command, before bringing her back after a group of dissenting officers tried to assassinate him. There was also a surge in Republican Guard partisan attacks. Increasingly paranoid, Hyperion acquired a fondness for impaling enemies. Lachesis shared his vulgar Social Darwinism and racism, but found him a poor wartime leader. She disliked his tendency to increasingly micromanage operations. Hyperion tried to stay in power by playing off Lachesis, Eisen and Darth Furcht against each other, encouraging rivalry between them.
Then the Netherworld Event turned the world upside down. Like virtually every world, Tephrike was affected by the mass raptures. The result was chaos. It triggered a serious crisis. Impaler reacted with purges, believing it was the end of days. Sith Lords like Lachesis found their forces depleted. Moreover, two heretical movements arose. A group of cultists had discovered what they believed to be 'a sacred text' from the Jedi, which told the true story of Darth Vader. Said text was actually a 'Galactic Civil War for Dummies' sort of book, which told the story of Vader's redemption. Thus one group proclaimed that since Vader had embraced the Light, it was their duty to do so as well as the true disciples of the Chosen One. In doing so, they would finish what he started by restoring the balance of the Force. They promised emancipation to the slaves.
The other group claimed that since Vader had fallen to the light side, Palpatine was the true Dark Lord and it was their duty to destroy the false Sith. Civil war ensued. Hyperion hoped to pit both factions against the other, but the leader of the 'Light Sith', Darth Krieg, was able to rally a number of rebellious slaves to his cause and took control. The new called himself Salus. Little did Lachesis know that prior to the insurrection, Eisen had been aware of the Light Sith and tried to use them before they escaped his grasp.
Defeated in battle, Lachesis continued to fight the Light Sith. Fortunately for her, they soon got embroiled in a war with the Dominion, becoming unofficial co-belligerents of the Republican Guard. But after many successes, the offensive faltered and the accord broke apart. Salus was murdered and the exiled Eisen returned. However, Lachesis had made an alliance with Darth Furcht. Both led the savage reclamation of Adlerberg, which had been seized by alien rebels from the ghetto their kind had been forced in centuries ago.
The uprising of the oppressed was crushed with extreme brutality. Eisen had committed troops and indeed arranged for Salus' death, but he had been outplayed. Furcht blackmailed Eisen about his past contacts with the heretics, forcing him to bend the knee. Lachesis wanted him executed, but Furcht deemed him useful. Eisen ground his teeth and bent the knee to him. The new Dark Master unleashed a wave of purges against so-called deviants and unbelievers. However, the Imperium needed time to consolidate before it could launch serious offensives.
Lachesis spent time rebuilding her power base, seeing to her lands and fighting the Guard. Furcht appointed her Commissioner for the Strengthening of Humanism, giving her broad authority for colonising 'reclaimed' territories with humans and eliminating 'harmful alien influences'. This job took her away from military command, but she treated the bureaucratic labyrinthe as another battlefield. Relationships between the Vaderite bigwigs were tense and characterised by distrust.
Political life was confined within the boundaries of bureaucratic fiefdoms organised vertically. The power blocs manoeuvred for an advantage, drawing their power from their link with the Leader and the factions of the movement. Each sought to increae its power at the expense of the other. This made other powerbrokers rivals rather than partners. Alliances were tactical in nature, for should one of the principals lose the Leader's confidence, the others would smell blood. Lachesis respected Furcht, but he was prickly and suspicious, with a pathological need to dominate any discussion. His secret police had a dossier on every principal, including Lachesis. Each was full of incriminating materiel. Indeed, much of Lachesis' time was spent fending off rivals inside and without her administrative fiefdom.
Then the star people arrived. The Sith saw the starships appear in orbit, but were unsure what to make of them. When they learned that the outsiders were bombing the Dominion's capital and that the Jedi Temple had been destroyed, they were jubilant. Furcht declared it a sign of the Dark God. The outsiders and the Republican Guard proceeded to take Fortress Purity. Word spread that the Dominion's Grandmaster was dead and that part of the army was in open revolt. The Sith leaders were in the midst of planning a great offensive to take advantage of the turmoil, when suddenly the outsiders bombarded Castle Maysaf. Lachesis was not at the castle at the time and thus survived. So did Eisen, who had had the presence of mind to slip out unnoticed once the bombardment began. The 'Fat One' could be surprisingly quiet and stealthy due to his prowess as an illusionist.
Furcht ordered the Council members and sorcerers present to conduct a ritual with him. They struck back by summoning demons aboard the Firemane flagship. While the Sith's ritual was successful and Firemane had to fight to take its warship back from the eldritch entities, Castle Maysaf was levelled. Furcht died in the bombardment. When Lachesis learned of what had happened, she knew civil war would be the result.
Eisen claimed the throne, but he was challenged by Furcht's son Achilles, a petty boy-king, and Darth Erlösung, an esoteric Sith. Lachesis disliked Eisen, considering him vain and corrupt. But Achilless was unstable and Erlösung had beliefs she considered crazy, which says quite a bit. Thus she reluctantly allied with him, though she hedged her bets until he offered her a position she considered worth her time. Now Eisen rules most of the Disciples. Lachesis is plotting to either take over herself or put a puppet in power after he dies. However, her power is checked by Darth Thrul, a powerful Sith sorcerer from old Sith blood and a sexist leech, amd Lord Skaer, the Imperium's chief architect and Minister of Armaments. Lachesis coldly despises both and they despise her in return, which is why Eisen keeps all three in his inner circle and at regular intervals throws one of them a bone.
Recently, she was sent to Hope Falls in order to investigate why the 'free xenos settlement' is behind on meeting its grain quotas, and carry out purges. Much to her chagrin, she is being accompanied by Kyriaki, a new favourite of Eisen's and the sickly clone of the 'space woman' Elpsis Kerrigan-Alcori. Lachesis accomplished this task with typical ruthlessness, carrying out a mass purge, forced requisitions of food and 'freeing the town of useless eaters' by 'evacuating' hospital patients deemed 'superfluous'. She found Kyriaki to be far too soft, but also capable and intelligent enough to overlook her lack of orthodoxy. When Kyriaki was declared to be blessed by the Vader following heroics on Chios, Lachesis thought it was nonsense, but the girl was useful.
As of late, Lachesis has been charged with strengthening and fortifying the Imperium's northern border with the Dominion by constructing a series of fortress cities, and relocating hundreds of thousands of Imperial citizens along with alien slave labourers to repopulate the devastated region. As a known war hawk, she intends to take full advantege of this new position. Harsh times are ahead for the downtrodden of the Imperium.
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