People I Used To Be

[Ras'kala'han]

| M | A | L | A | C | H | O | R |​

​

The heart of life that had been breathed into the world of Malachor V — was it dying? Some might feel it in the air, that the fingers of the Imperial hand were curling around it into a fist. Would they rather have a wasteland than a single element of noncompliance? Perhaps. Perhaps there might even be something yet more similar, that there must be a vast void on Malachor to satiate the hunger of the Sith, that the scars of the Mandalorian War must never be healed. That there must be an empty solidity to reflect the endless echoes of death cast out by the darkness.

At the very least, there was one silence that might be noticeable, if one was the kind to listen often, and listen closely. Once, there was a shadowy claw that was intertwined in the web of crime and punishment, a source of blackmail, hostage-taking, brainwashing. The tyranny that anarchy might allow to exist, concerned only with extracting credits. The first casualty of the new age.

Disturbed by the Force, the air filled with energy, and a storm raged. Ion eddies washed over the empty deserts and city outskirts, and technology flickered and failed. The power wavered and fluctuated, and there were hails of sparks, wind, rain, lightning and clouds touched by strange lights from within. And with it, a bubble-like dome of invisibility burst.

The Temple of the Unseen Eye was an ugly structure, geometric blocks of concrete and polyplast intersecting at odd angles, painted in eyesore patterns of black and white designed to confound sensor arrays, constantly shifting and interfering, ablating its presence and concealing it, erasing each trace of itself.

A single lightning-strike after the shield enveloping it flickered was enough to ruin its stealth capabilities. Once, droids might have rushed to repair and reroute. Once, traps and secondary systems may have triggered. No longer. The Temple was empty, its master was long gone. Whatever might be in it was laid bare for the taking.

[member="Darth Abyss"]​

 

[Darth Abyss]

Malachor, The Tainted City

Despite the rampant art that the people of Malachor had been so dedicated to spread onto every barely civilised corner of the dead world, the Free Cities never had grown beautiful. Junk and dirt wasn't merely a part of them, it was their true essence, a reminder that everything, how worthless it may be, could become something more with enough faith, vision and ingenuity. Now the cities that once been overpopulated by the countless thugs and lowlifes were abandoned, and only few remained to life and scavenge between the structures that had already began falling apart.

At first the people had done their best to adjust to the empire's oppressing presence upon the home of the free, but as their new tyrannical overlords began to enforce order within their borders, most left in a hurry. Some returned to their old life, spending the rest of their days in the indomitable bastions of chaos like Nar Shaddaa, while many others had found refuge within their sister cities on Katarr.

Malachor's once glorious Prophet now traversed the shattered ruins of his magnus opus shrouded under multiple layers of dirty rags, obscuring his identity to the point where he was just another fool trying to claim what little was left here. His speeder had only hours ago belonged to two of the Empire's Officers, who's corpses had been carelessly discarded in a nearby back ally trashcan. There had been a time where Abyss had aided them in their conquest, but with their decision that his world was worth more as a barren wasteland came the knowledge that they were no longer worthy of his service.

The grief of witnessing the ruination of what he considered his greatest work weighted heavily on him, but he had not come back to mourn what he had lost. Instead he had come to meet an old friend, one that had held many names within Abyss mind as time passed by: Cripple, Insect, Antherion, and lastly Darth Vesper. His rivalry, his all consuming hate for the little vermin that had crossed his path once to often had been the only constant in his quest to claim and reclaim Malachor, and so it would be only fitting to leave his world by offering him a final, bloody goodbye.

The speeder carried Abyss through the vast wastelands, to the Temple of the Unseen Eye. Yet once his metal feet reached the ground he felt nothing. No sense of his coming victory or defeat, no hint of a trap or ambush, not even the presence of his adversary. Like the cities, like Malachor itself the temple was abandoned, already lost and forgotten by all but the currents of time. Quietly the Sith Lord completed his journey, slipping into the structure to learn what had happened.

[member="Slayne"]

 

[Ras'kala'han]

The first thing that strikes the person to enter the Temple is its structure - it winds, hallways hook and double back, end unexpectedly only to open on strange triggers. One might at first even think that its hallways were shifting and moving of their own, deceitful will. It was not built for the ordinary beings, but rather to allow passage by those machines that were part of its sterile internal processes, and to yield up its secrets to those whose insight was touched by the power of the Force.

Many of those secrets, it quickly became apparent, were absent. Cages and cell blocks were found, and austere barracks, but the spartan accommodations held only slowly decaying corpses, skin pulled tight and pale over cold expressions of fear. No wounds of the Dark Side to sap their life away, or lightning burns, or saber strikes marked them, however. To the eyes of a trained poisoner, a devotee of the weapons of witches and assassins, the marks of a flood of cyanogen gas were apparent.

The last message, the last order they received, was still present: at a touch, the holoterminal played its most recent broadcast. "This temple once was important, perhaps, but that door has now closed." Darth Vesper appeared in the flickering hologram, clad in a simple, black tunic and slacks. "Forever. You no longer serve any purpose, and therefore I release you from my service."

But there was another, beside him - a woman, wearing a hood and robes, unfamiliar, her eyes lit from within the darkness of her cloak, her hair streaked with a single light stripe, mouth covered likewise by tattered, dark cloth. Compared in stance, posture, subtle cues, she stood taller than her companion, seemed more at ease.

"...it is done. We should depart soon . This must be a lesson to you, Kzaevas. There must be no part of yourself, no thing you possess, nothing that you have that you cannot live without. If someone can destroy you by taking something away, you must destroy that thing first and deprive them of the opportunity. Learn to let go, because the Galaxy is a cold and terrible place, but with wisdom and strength, you will be able to bring it to heel..."

"...my daughter."

The recording ended, leaving the Mindeater in silence. Deeper truths awaited only further within the Temple.

[member="Darth Abyss"]​

 

[Darth Abyss]

The ruins of a lost past.

Abyss had ventured into the depths of countless ancient temples and tombs, all left behind by the great sith of past ages. Darth Vesper's temple was unlike any of them. The darkness that surrounded him was that of Malachor itself, without even a glimpse of the cripple's own power.

How fitting.

His investigation carried him through various rooms within the structure, all showing signs of a hurried retreat. Prisoners killed carelessly by toxic gas, without even finishing whatever work had been done on them. Only when the sith lord touched a nearby terminal to seek answers, he found a memory of the vile vermin that had lived here.

The message played before his eyes, or whatever it was that he used to see by now, a question Abyss himself couldn't really answer anymore. First Antherion's deactivation of the unseen eye, which answered some questions but left out any that the Prophet really cared for. Then the second part followed, and Abyss position straightened as the video passed by.

The laugh that followed it shook the structure, a dark, twisted echo of victory. He activated his comm and called his agents, while his deformed legs carried him deeper into the structure.

"Place a bounty on a woman called Kzaevas. If she ever shows her face in any corner of the colonized galaxy, I want her heart ripped out and her head removed from her shoulders."

His laugh rose once more, resounding between the dead walls of the temple. If his foe had a daughter, a secret he left behind to be found, the he would make sure that her blood would be spilled, until the day he would stumble over the cripple once again. Then, when his linage would be erased entirely, he would find his well deserved victory

[member="Slayne"]

 

[Ras'kala'han]

As the husk lord proceeded through the abandoned facility, not yet ruins yet something far less than what it once might have been or had aspired to be, the winding labyrinth of halls was touched only by emptiness. No relics, not even information - data purged, people slain, anything of value taken. All he was left with was a vague impression of the once-Antherion's decorative tastes, mostly classic Sith iconography in soft fabrics and polished woods, gleaming metallic accents and other finery. Even here, there was a touch of falsehood to it - no amount of opulence could mask the nature of this installation as a cold, brutalistic military operation, harsh angles and few colors. Luxury was not a fulfillment, but a facade.

In time, the hallways merged to one, a single hallway began and, as if on cue, images appeared, projected from the floors and the ceiling. Strangely, they were moments of vulnerability, anger, anguish. The hallway was transformed into a gallery of twisted portraits, the lissome youth slamming his fist against tables, shrieking, upending rows of vials bubbling with fluid, rambling in an incoherent mingling of hieratic tongues in futile incantations, or pleading to droids, servitors, the walls and the ceilings in Sith, in basic:

"Give it back to me, you useless fools. Give it back to me!"

The images blurred, time indicators showing hours passing by of this sick pageantry, days. Dissections, experiments, rituals and relics being exposed to him, one by one by one, all of it to no apparent effect, though the video did not allow for a purpose to be divined.

Eventually, this surreal passage lead to a single room, the heart of the Temple of the Unseen Eye. There, Abyss could sense the single trace of his enemy's power, the whisper of the Dark Side in its most simple of forms: anguish. Loss, something precious, everything precious, lost and the Dark Side flowing into the emptiness to fill it. Not even the altruistic mourning of love, but the craven hunger of the greedy addict denied. A few torches illuminated the chamber with the light of their eerie blue fire, an imitation of the great Dark Temple of Dromund Kaas. At the center there sat a simplistic throne, yet on the throne was no man, but rather a droid.

A hologram flickered, and the face of Antherion superimposed itself over the droid's own head, his voice speaking through its strained, artificial intonation.

"You have intruded into my inner sanctum - to avoid triggering deadly traps, do not interrupt this courier. If you are Darth Abyss, please offer verbal confirmation to receive pre-recorded messages in response to whatever questions you might have. If not, please hold for an alternative recorded message.

"Though please, if you are one of Abyss' hounds, I invite you to trip the failsafe. Knowing some servants of his died here would make this whole blasted expense worth it."

[member="Darth Abyss"]​

 

[Darth Abyss]

Over the years Abyss had seen pretty much anything a living soul could imagine and more, the depravity of humankind, death, war and corruption. Still when he traversed through the eery gallery of the cripple's descend he couldn't but feel a sense of unease. Not because he felt fear about his foe, but because the depictions of his fall were all to reminiscent of own. Even if didn't knew what it had been that Antherion had searched so desperately, it was impossible to miss the signs of the onset of madness born from obsession.

They weren't that different after all.

Following a long last look on the remains of the cripple's tragedy, the husk pulled himself together. This was his day of victory, and he would enjoy every second of it. Malachor was lost, but the true battle had been won. Worlds, armies and politics meant nothing compared to a deeply personal victory and the broken chains that came with it.

Finally he felt it, the last echo that his rival had left on this world. Not a true mark, but rather the cold absence of one, a small abyss ripped into the fabric of reality.

How fitting once again.

"Do not tempt me, mindless tincan. It would greatly amuse me to know what inefficient nonsense our crippled friend considered deadly traps."

For a moment Abyss toyed with the thought of drawing his saber to detach the legs from the droid that so mockingly wore the cripple's. Yet that would be petty, even for his standards. It wasn't like he couldn't have another cheap laugh at the expense of his rival's memory, but he hadn't come to life out his deranged revenge fantasies on a soulless piece of scrap.

[member="Slayne"]