Public Remember When: The Netherworld Crisis (844 ABY - 20 years ago)

[Jend-Ro Quill]

OOC/ Some events and also Events have shaken the galaxy, but many of our writers weren't around for them and many of our characters didn't exist yet. This thread is a dumping ground for vignettes or unconnected little stories that take place twenty years ago during the Second Akala Crisis - the Netherworld event.

• Billions of people on every major world vanished overnight. Every interstellar government's territory contracted sharply as chaos descended.
• Some of the lost reemerged from Netherworld rifts.
• Around a dozen uninhabited planets from the Yuuzhan Vong galaxy appeared in ours.
• Corellia forcibly merged with one of the newly-arrived planets in a terrible cataclysm that took decades to repair. Corellia still bears the scars, including miles-deep fissures.
• Akala was killed deep in the Maw, ending the crisis. Most of the Netherworld rifts closed.

Where was your character, if they were alive at this point? What were they doing? How did the Netherworld Crisis affect them? If they weren't alive, what was happening to their parents, teachers...?

IC/

JEND-RO QUILL, JEDI KNIGHT
​

Not that I'm eager to fight, but this isn't an enemy we can fight. Those who vanished - there's no commonality, no sense of where they went apart from wild rumors about the afterlife. They're gone as absolutely as if someone took an overcharged disruptor to a significant chunk of the galaxy's population.

I wish you were here, Master Boolon. Be with me. I'm going to need it. I'm tired and I'm scared. I grew up in the Dark Age just like you - did you know we were born in the same year? - and it terrifies me how close we're coming to a repeat performance. There's chaos in every sector. Governments are collapsing outright. Planets are turning insular like it's the Gulag Virus all over again. The one bright side of all this is that I get to push off the Master trials a little longer.

If people really are emerging from the Netherworld of the Force, will I get to see you again?

 

[Kuxirra Tano-Bonteri]

Twenty years ago...Kuxirra's parents were the same age she is now: Sixteen. They had started dating each other by now. Zenda's parents disappeared, as did Leehak's. They spent as much time together as they could, more so now more than ever, worried that one would disappear without the other. They did what they could to help out others while remaining in constant contact with each other.

 

[Vora Kaar]

The man later to be known as Vora Kaar stood holding aloft a longsword. One that dripped with viscera from his once friends and allies. People whom he had adored, loved, and cared for. These people aided him, yet now they lay at his feet. Eye's clenched tightly with screams of the damned echoing around him. Portals that had been open were now closed as whatever the source was, had been ended or decided to stop. Arms and body shaking as he felt a rage within his heart. Heavy breathing nearing on hyperventilation. The man stood in bloodied robes as others around him cried in pain, loss, or were left silent in the wake of so much destruction.

Lives had been interchanged. People who were once thought dead, rose and returned. Many who had come back, sought to bring about the end of those they left behind, while others simply wanted a second chance. The price for this? was some were trapped on the other side of this portal.

Vora stood there. Long hair barely kept up in a pony-tail. Strands plastered to his face in blood, sweat and tears. A woman knelt in front of him. Crying and begging for her life as a lifeless body was held in her arms.

"SILENCE!"

A swipe of the sword ended the screaming of the woman for a moment, but it continued to echo in his head. Piercing his skull in such sickness. The body fell limp as he shambled forward. Barely lifting his feet off of the pavement. A helmet lay off to the side. One that belonged to... It belonged to... A shake of the head to remove the memories of what transpired. Yet, drawn to it, he picked it up, and held onto it as the sword held aloft.

"I.. I'm sorry."

Speaking to no one in particular, this man, broken and bloodied, walked away from the carnage left behind. The last moments of who he was, died along with those in what would be called the Netherworld Event. As though it were a happy time for games and activities. Yet, out of this, became the man who was Vora Kaar.

Jend-Ro Quill

 

[Jacen Nimdok]

As with any great tragedy, one tended to remember where one was when the news first reached them. Arimanes Bosch was on Belazura, a planet renowned for its natural beauty. Nowhere in the galaxy seemed further away from the death and destruction the Netherworld Crisis had wrought than that place.

Some of the tourists had vanished, of course. The local authorities were overloaded with reports of missing persons and supernatural disappearances. When it became clear that this was a much larger event than they ever could've imagined, Arimanes had left his hotel room, ventured out into one of the immaculate hillsides the world was famous for, sat down on the grass, and watched the sun set over the mountains.

Meanwhile, on Alderaan, Errik Nimdok—a gawky, pimply seventeen year old—was sitting in an empty house. He was rapidly working his way through his father's modest home bar, trying to forget and ignore the panic and pandemonium in the streets. Drunk for the first time in his life, he stumbled over to the kitchen sink, filling the empty bottle with water, praying his parents wouldn't notice... only to remember that they were never coming home again. The thought sobered him instantly. His grip on the bottle went slack; it fell over on its side in the basin, the water sloshing out and down the drain. He left the faucet running on full blast.

 

[Cyran Vaas]

"We can't look after you forever you know..."

Zeltros 844 ABY

Cyran was a bit of a bratty child, always wanting more then he deserved. Taking everything for granted. But then again he was only 6. It's hard to really get too made at such a young child. Yet he lived a pretty happy and carefree life, much like most children on Zeltros. The good vibes were all they knew, even more so than the adults. Not to mention on a planets like Zeltros it was far easier to stay young forever, in spirt at least.

Sadly, on one fateful morning this innocence as shattered for Cyran. Feeling hungry he wandered into his parents room fairly early in the morning. Gently tugging on the sheets to wake them up. They woke up and asked their son what he needed so early.

"Cereal Please, with the blue milk?" He asked them. His father groaned and fell back onto his pillow to ignore his pestering song. Sighing his mother got out of bed. Wondering over to Cyran and leading him out.

"You know Cyran, I think it's time you get your own cereal, you're a big boy now." She said about to shut the door.

"But I don't know how to pour my own bowl." Cyran protested. Sighing once more she replied.

"Okay, I'll show you how so that you can get your own breakfast. I'll be in the kitchen in a little bit. We can't look after you forever you know..." Cyran nodded back to her before she closed the door to their bedroom. Cyran headed back down stairs and waited in the kitchen for his mother to show him how to prepare cereal... and he waited some more...

But his mother or father never came...

 

[Zark San Tekka]

CAPTAIN ZARK, OUTCAST KNIGHT
BREAKING OF CORELLIA

"Get a move on back there! Sooner we burn for hard vacuum the better."

This wasn't the first time he'd landed in Coronet broadcasting a false transponder code. His battered old Hammerhead corvette the Arcadia wasn't exactly welcome near One Sith space. Probably something to do with the blasters and thermal detonators in his cargo hold being unloaded by Core World insurgents. Then again maybe it was the supply convoy they hit last week. Small victories. That was all they seemed able to afford anymore and even still it was getting harder to run the Sith blockades.

Zark was alone in the control cabin running a few pre-flight system checks. His lightsaber was in a box in his quarters where it had remained hidden out of sight for almost a decade. The heavy blaster on his hip felt far more comfortable these days. Yet despite closing himself off to the Force after his master's death when the warning struck he could feel it deep in his soul anyway. Double vision. Something terrible was coming.

"Tusk, get that cargo bay secured," squeals of protest in gammorese squawked over the ship's internal comlink, "I don't care if you're not done. I don't like the look of that horizon. Seal it up. Now."

What at first the privateer had supposed was an atmospheric storm cloud was quickly growing into something monstrous and quite unlike anything he'd ever seen before. From Jedi Knight to infamous outlaw the Arcadia's captain had seen a lot. A massive disturbance in the Force threatened to overwhelm him it had been so long.

"Captain? I don't feel so good..."

He could tell something was wrong with his first mate Arix before the young scavenger stumbled. Zark caught him even as he faded into dust. Shock and confusion washed over the spacer. He could sense a great many voices cry out in the Force only to be silenced forever. Whatever was happening to Corellia was only getting worse, and he had a bad feeling that the corvette's pilot was no longer on her way.

"Everyone strap in for emergency launch. This is going to get rough."

Settling himself down at the controls Zark bypassed any remaining pre-flight checks and powered up sublight drives. Sensors were going haywire and alarms started sounding all over. He wanted to believe there was some kind of malfunction. If this data was accurate the planet was starting to come apart. Despite frantic protests from traffic control the Arcadia blasted off even as the spaceport collapsed underneath them in a massive groundquake.

Shockwaves chased him down and in desperation before the navcomputer could complete its calculations Zark triggered a lightspeed skip.