Igni Irae
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
Intent: Codify a frenemy for Kyriaki.
Image Credit: Here.
Role: Frenemy for Kyriaki, Sith apprentice of Darth Lachesis. Essentially, Sibylla is the anti-Kyriaki. One wants to tear the Vaderite state down because it is evil, the other wants to control and reform it to become less wasteful, while still being an awful dictatorship.
Permissions: N/A.
Links: The Valkyrie's Diary, Kyriaki, Dominion of Light, Republican Guard, Into Darkness, After Darkness, Glorious Conflict, Firemane, Amidala Corps, Adlerberg, Hope Falls, Caution and Control, Castle Maysaf, Academy of the Scions of the Vader, Sentinel's Rest, Palmyra's Wail, Elpsis Kerrigan-Alcori, Humanity's Blade, Twi'lek, KEC Stormtrooper Corps, Camp Progress, Illuminated Path of the Light Father, Inheritors of the Light Father.
PHYSICAL INFORMATION
Age: 24
Force Sensitivity: Knight
Species: Human
Appearance: Sibylla is a human female of average height in her twenties. Her most striking features are her blue eyes and her cybernetics. Her mouth, jaw, nose and most of her cheeks are fully covered by a metal mask. But her eyes and short black hair are visible. Her skin is pale and her features youthful. She has a formidable, albeit bulky cybernetic arm. There is a metal panel on her chest that is part of an artificial breathing apparatus. Her breathing is like an incessant rasp.
Sibyllla sarcastically calls it her box. It filters the air she breathes because her lungs are still weak and prone to infection. Whenever she eats, she has to remove the mask in a sterile room, and ingest the prepared food, then cleanse and remask. She needs to drink filtered water. Her appearance makes her looks like a devoted Vader worshipper, which is something that gets respect, but undesirable as a 'mate'. This means she has freedom to pursue her projects. Her typical attire for work is a grey Sith uniform. She will wear armour when she expects combat.
SOCIAL INFORMATION
Name: Sibylla Laskaris.
Loyalties: Humanist People's Party, Darth Lachesis, Tephrike, KEC, Darth Eisen, Disciples of the Vader, KEC Division Humanity's Blade, Doctor Jonas Menkales.
Wealth: Tephrike is a war-torn, poor planet; corruption, irresponsible fiscal policies and mismanagement are endemic, especially in the Imperium. The planet is cut off from the galactic markets. Sibylla comes from a - by Tephriki standards - rich family, but it is a big one and she is only the fourth child. Moreover, she is out of favour with the patriarch. So she doesn't get much out of it. However, she's the apprentice of a powerful Sith Lord. Like all Disciples, she receives a government salary. A small amount of her payment is in specie. This is helpful since gold or silver has actual value. The rest is in coupons and vouchers for food and clothes at the special shops and paper money not worth what it is printed on.
As a Sith, Sibylla 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.
Sibylla is the nominal head of a children's entertainment company. It specialises in board games, collectible card games and tabletop roleplaying games full of racist propaganda. One example is the popular tabletop roleplaying game 'Compounds and Krayts'. She doesn't even have to attend board meetings to get paid. It is pertinent to note that the company only produces for the domestic market, and the planet it operates on happens to be a hellhole. Thus it cannot be compared to galactic corporations.
Notable Possessions: Owns a copy of Glorious Conflict, the ideological manifesto of the Vaderites. This rambling, poorly written piece of rubbish is required reading for all Sith acolytes. It proclaims that the Gulag Virus was orchestrated by a sinister cabal of alien Jedi and Twi'lek change colour by drinking human blood. Sibylla is dismissive of it. Her annotations are sparse. She owns a Sith Sword that is the mark of her status as a graduate of the Sith academy. Her cybernetically enhanced strength helps her wield it. Has a heavily encrypted datacron and a paper book with her research notes. Has a suit of Armour and a Cloak of Hate. She has an apartment in the better part of Adlerberg. The place is kept fastidiously clean. It has a special, sterile room where she can take off her mask.
Skills: Sibylla is a Sith warrior and an alchemist associated with a pillar of research in the Disciples' hierarchy. She is a skilled combatant trained in the use of a variety of weapons. However, while she knows of lightsabres, she lacks familiarity with them since they are incredibly rare on Tephrike. As is typical for Tephriki Force-Users, her go-to melee weapon is an alchemised or imbued blade. She has also not been trained as a starship pilot, though she can pilot various ground vehicles.
She has a good understanding of cybernetics, which is helpful for maintaing her augmentations since she depends on them to survive. Sibylla has a strong interest in merging machinery and the Force, especially through breaking down and harvesting organic essence. She is quite knowledgeable regarding alchemy, nethermancy, spirits, and Force nexi. She has dedicated a lot of time to studying these preternatural phenomena. However, Sibylla's life is not solely consumed by scheming and unethical research. She is musically inclined. She and Menkales do a good rendition of the 'Dark Father's March', a popular classical tune in the Imperium. Sibylla plays the piano, and Menkales the violin. It is said to be able to reduce grizzled veterans to tears.
Languages: Basic is Sibylla's mother tongue, as it is the lingua franca of the Imperium. She understands binary droidspeak. She also knows ancient Sith, except it isn't. Basically, it's a bastardised version learned from some ancient texts which themselves were incorrect. If she ever spoke to a Sith Pureblood it would be like someone speaking a pidgin creole.
Personality:
"The xenos can be put to use, but not with the whip, but with the machine. They represent a permanent, inexhaustible solution to the Imperium's labour crises."
Not everyone who serves the slavocratic, misogynistic, human supremacist state the Disciples of the Vader have built is a zealot. There are people who recognise the system is evil and oppose it. This can take many forms - from armed resistance to hiding and protecting people persecuted by it or committing nonviolent acts of sabotage to distributing leaflets denouncing the system and its horrible crimes against sentience.
There are people who criticise certain aspects of the system and try to mitigate it, even if they remain obedient on the whole. There are people who recognise it is bad but don't care. And finally there are people like Sibylla. She is a Sith who doesn't believe in the Humanist system. She sees her peers' inefficiency and petty cruelty, but rather than wanting to bring it down they want to reform it...and eventually control it. She objects to the system not because it is evil but because it is stupid. Women are discriminated against even though this is illogical. Countless acolytes are killed or permanently ruined during illogical trials.
The Sith Code teaches the Sith to break their chains, but they have chained themselves by becoming totally reliant on slave ghettos and camps that are breeding grounds for disease. Monitoring and repressing the slaves ties up manpower. Plus the attrition rate is so high that oftentimes the slaves die before they even deliver the desired output. Her ambition is to become a Sith Lord and eventually to be if not Supreme Leader then a key actor. Not so much for power in and of itself but out of a mixture of misguided belief she can make a difference, and simple expedience.
Her mask and her proto-Vader style breathing apparatus gives her a disconcerting appearance. But in terms of persona Sibylla is polite, friendly and calm...and utterly ruthless. As an ally, Sibylla is fairly reliable unless cheated. She disdains uncontrolled cruelty, priding herself on her 'cool rationality'. She considers herself to be a bit of an innovator. Why use work crews of malnourished, unreliable slaves when you can harvest their souls to power machinery? And deploy droids or spawned beasts.
"The Humanist Superman wants his mate to be strong, but not too strong. She must be a beautiful showpiece and bear his children. I'm free of that nonsense. The bedding, coitus, child-bearing – it's all so messy."
Sibylla is asexual and thus quite happy about the fact that her disfigurement makes her an 'undesirable' mate in the eyes of the misogynistic Vaderites. The idea of having intercourse and bearing children genuinely creeps her out. The misogyny that permeates Vaderite society contributes to this significantly. Sibylla has an older sister called Chryssa who is considered a 'perfect catch' due to her beauty and has been wed to a far older male Vaderite. She had no choice in he matter since the marriage was arranged by her parents for political gain, Sibylla feels sorry for her. If 'they/them' were acceptable pronouns to the Vaderites she'd use them. But she feels she's freed herself from the weakness of organic desires. Overall, she is dismissive of most people, humans or aliens.
Sibylla maintains a friendship with Doctor Menkales, a notorious concentration camp doctor and war criminal who has been nicknamed 'the Angel of Death' by his victims. The two genuinely get on. She is well aware that he carries out barbaric medical experiments on prisoners. He happened to be in the hospital when she was getting fitted with her 'box' and prosthetics. Menkales noticed that the doctor was not handling the procedure properly and took action that saved her life. She believes that some of his theories constitute pseudo-science, but finds he is a smart man she can exchange ideas with. Moreover, he treats her with respect. Sibylla is a guest at his house sometimes. His son calls her Auntie Sibie. Sibylla made the kid an enchanted crystal which glows when he holds it. She saved Menkales' life from a 'Light Sith' assassination attempt.
Sibylla sometimes works together with Kyriaki. Both are in a similar boat - two female Disciples trying to make their way in a toxic, totalitarian system. Sibylla has dubbed them the 'competent Disciples'. Sibylla is not antagonistic to the clone. Kyriaki is someone who's not blinded by dogma and has an analytical mind. But Sibylla feels that the clone is not the way of the future.
Sibylla respects her master Darth Lachesis, viewing her as a powerful woman forging an independent path in a sexist, patriarchal culture. She has learned a lot from her master about leadership. Like every prominent Vaderite, Lachesis profits from bribes and kickbacks, but she invests them into her province and uses them to benefit her soldiers instead of wasting them on vanity projects like yachts and palaces. However, Sibylla doesn't share her master's devotion to Humanist ideology. Sibylla is close to her sister Angela, who tried to buck free of the social constraints and was committed to an institution and lobotmised for 'her own good'. Sibylla freed her sister and brought her to a home in the countryside far from her family's reach. She is very protective of her...and has sworn to avenge herself on the family patriarch for taking her mind.
COMBAT INFORMATION
Weapon of Choice: Alchemised or Force imbued blade and other melee weapons, slugthrowers and blasters, the Force.
Combat Function: Broadly speaking, Sibylla has a skill set comparable to that of a Sith Inquisitor, employing a combination of blade, conventional weapons and the Force in combat. She is ruthless and cunning in battle. She has an array of Force powers she can use in battle to smite her foes and bolster herself, but is also skilled with the blade. She will use quick and lethal manoeuvres to outmanoeuvre and strike an enemy, taking advantage of the boost her cybernetic augmentations grant her.
Sibylla's 'box' represents a vulnerability, as she depends on this device to breathe and thus survive. It makes her more susceptible to strong ion and electrical currents. She is aware of this and takes steps to shield herself, but cannot entirely eliminate it. Sibylla wields an enchanted blade rather than a lightsabre and is not trained in starship piloting. First and foremost Sibylla ensures is a survivor. If the situation is dire, she will withdrawal or wait for the circumstances to turn in her favour. She is no coward, but she will seek to avoid battle if she believes she is outmatched. To her, surviva takes precedence over ego or notions of honour.
Force Abilities (Force Users Only): Sibylla is a neophyte alchemist, and has a natural affinity for ghosts. In addition, she has some combat powers. She is skilled in telekinesis and its various sub-applications, especially Force Choke, as well as Force Drain, Force Fear and Tutaminis. She also has some understanding of mechu-deru and Drain Knowledge. Sibylla has an interest in and aptitude for Force imbuement, but it manifests in an unconventional fashion. She is less interested in enchanting weapons and armour, though she can do that too, but instead has the idea of creating enchanted locks, hinges or other seemingly mundane, practical things with it.
Strengths:
- Powerful combatant. She is a Sith, and good at using the Force and her cybernetics to improve her strength and resilience.
- Cunning. She is no brute, but a calculating, intelligent person.
- Sibylla depends on her cybernetic breathing apparatus to survive. This makes her susceptible to strong ion, EMP, and electrical attacks. She is aware of this and takes precautions, but it is still a potentially fatal vulnerability. Her 'box' makes using electricity-based Force powers such as Lightning perilous for her.
- She is not trained in the use of a lightsabre or starship piloting. Like most Tephriki, she has never left her homeworld.
Sibylla grew up on Tephrike, a war-torn, devastated world where the Dark Age never ended. She was born in the Imperium, a state built upon the bedrock of human supremacism, genocide and enslavement of non-humans and persecution of 'racial enemies'. It was governed by the Disciples of the Vader, a Sith cult that worshipped the ancient Dark Lord. Sibylla grew up in privileged circumstances. But her life was also characterised by societal pressures, conformism and bigotry. Her father Dionysus Laskaris was a leading Imperial banker and advisor to the Imperial government on economic and financial matters. He was a member of the board of directors of the Laskaris and Tzikes Bank of the Imperium, as well as of over forty other companies.
This included a chemical and pharmaceutical corporation that manufactured poison gas, which, the Vaderites used to murder 'undesirables', and profited from forced labour. A massive factory complex in the Camp Progress concentration camp received funding from him. There the inmates laboured under appalling conditions until they collapsed. He was known in the Vaderite corporate world as a model executive. Dionysus had convinced himself that he was only producing the tools of death through lending, not pulling the trigger himself. However, he made a special effort to ensure that government forced 'gifts' from Xenos worthies were repaid on time. Or else examples were made. But that was all just accounting, numbers did not hurt people.
Sibylla's mother Hermione was a wealthy socialite with a reputation for being a philantrophist. Dionysus provided well for the family, but cheated on her. He openly flaunted his affair with his twenty-four year old secretary in front of his wife. When Hermione was pregnant with Sibylla, she went back to her parents for a while. She only returned to her husband after her father had told her that divorce was not possible. Her husband's philandering took a toll on her health. Hermiony took different tranquilisers to relieve nervous tension or stress. She also took medication to relieve her nervous stomach. However, outwardly she would allow nothing to upset the image of them as the perfect Humanist family. After giving birth to Sibylla, she was awarded the Mother's Cross in bronze.
Sibylla also had three siblings: an older sister called Chryssa, an older brother called Georgios and a older sister called Angela. She was particularly close to the last. Growing up, Sibylla was raised in high society. Her family had a villa and estates, but life was stiffling. The Vaderites had patriarchal values and her family embraced them. Her brother was supposed to inherit the family business after a career as a youth leader in the Imperial Youth Corps and military service. Meanwhile, she and her sisters were supposed to be married to 'men of wealth and good breeding', bear their husbands' children and not 'shame' the family. Their education was largely left to servants and a governess. Naturally, the family had alien slaves do menial work for them. Like every human girl in the Imperium, Sibylla was inducted into the girls' wing of the Humanist Party's youth movement when she was ten.
Activities in the group were a mixture of domestic training, outdoor exercises and physical training. It was supposed to promote physical health so that one day the girls could fulfil their duty to the nation as mothers, homemakers and wives. They were also subjected to ideological indoctrination. A children's book she had to read 'warned' her of the dangers of trusting 'xenos', which is what the Vaderites called non-humans. It showed how during the Dark Age Twi'lek and Zeltron doctors had poisoned young human children while pretending to vaccinate them against the Plague. She was told that the Dominion of Light and the Republican Guard were waging a campaign of genocide against the human species. Sibylla enjoyed the outdoors activities, but resented how she was being pushed into embracing a purely domestic life. Being expected to devote herself purely to producing children physically revolted her.
Sibylla was close to her older sister Angela, a lively and dynamic girl. Young Sibylla was quite shy, and Angela protected her from bullies. Her older sister defied social conventions because she had intellectual ambitions and wanted to pursue a career in academia. She had ambitions to go to university and study to acquire a degree in history to one day become a professor. Moreover, Angela had an affair with a near-human chauffeur of the family. This was scandalous. He was sent away by their parents and never heard of again. But Angela willfully did it again and tried to leave and pursue her own path. When Angela wrote a scholarly article for an academic journal, the editors refused to publish it under a woman's name. So she resubbed it under the name Angelos and it was immediately printed and received glowing commentary. Sibylla knew the truth, but kept her sister's secret. She caught a glimpse of what her future might be when her sister Chryssa was married off to a far older 'gentleman'.
Sibylla's Force-Sensitivity manifested during a natural disaster when she and her brother were together. They happened to be on vacation when a storm broke out. Her brother was pinned under a fallen tree, but she was able to free him. The effort involved knocked her out and left her exhausted, but it saved his life - and changed her life forever. The Laskaris family had lineage with Force usage but neither parent had an affinity for the Force. But Sibylla was born with a strong connection. The vagueries of this genetic accident meant she was put under a lot of pressure from her family. As a wealthy businessman, Dionysus belonged to the elite, but it was the Sith who had monopolised power in the Imperium. As a Force User, Sibylla could be trained and join this exclusive order, advancing the family's interests.
Of course, the assumption was that she would not progress far in the ranks and instead be married off to a Sith Lord. Regardless, Sibylla was sent off to the Academy of the Scions of the Vader, a major Sith training institution located in the swamplands. Here she would be moulded into becoming one of the chosen few, but also be cut off from her family. It was especially painful for her to be separated from Angela, though she promised to contact her whenever possible.
Sith training tends to be pointlessly brutal no matter where one goes, and the Academy was no different. Andronikos Thalakes, a pompous, cruel bully, was one of the overseers. He also happened to be incredibly sexist. He compensated for his lack of competence with a heavy dose of sadism. Sometimes the students were deliberately starved, forcing them to steal. This was supposed to toughen them up. Inevitably they were caught, and punished. Sibylla bore scars from being chained to an altar and whipped. It was supposed to make them as tough as durasteel.
"No one survives the trials unmarked."
They were also 'bloodied' by witnessing executions of 'xenos criminals'. The first time they only watched, the second they had to wet their blades. Here it is worth noting that the students were teenagers. Several students also fell sick from bad diet or swamp fever. They were told that this was the Dark Father's judgement. Strength and good health were a sign of his favour, and frailty the opposite. When Sibylla fell ill, she was told it was a sign she didn't want to succeed. In truth, the diseases was caused by bacteria, viruses or parasites transmitted by mosquitoes.
Though no powerhouse, Sibylla showed talent as a duellist, but her main interest lay in the more arcane aspects of the Force. However, it manifested in a somewhat unconventional manner. Whereas people use the Force to enchant weapons and armour she has the idea of creating locks, hinges or other seemingly mundane things with it. Unbreakable, powered by the Dark Side, and able to be enhanced. She made her own sword during her training. At first she tried various mystical recipes but then formulated her own, binding the Force into the blade. She also feuded with another female Sith called Mideia, a self-serving stereotype. At first Mideia seemed to be a friend, but it soon became clear that she was secretly trying to undermine her and sabotage her because she viewed her as 'competition'. Both shared an interest in arcana, but Mideia had a fixation with devouring ghosts in order to consume their strength. Sibylla didn't share this drive.
As part of her training, Sibylla was sent on a trial to recover a Sith artefact from a tomb. Diligent research revealed to her that it had been picked clean, if it ever had any artefacts to begin with. It was basically a way to punish and potentially dispose of an acolyte the overseer did not like. The overseer had promised a group of acolytes he disapproved of that whoever brought an artefact back would become the apprentice of a major Sith Master. Realising the task was stupid and that the logical end result would consist of some fighting over a toy that probably did not exist, Sibylla was able to persuade some of the students to work together. Instead of visiting a 'tomb', they raided an abandoned science facility that had been ignored and long devoured by nature. Of the three acolytes who accompanied her, one died fighting beasts, and another was severely injured. However, they were able to come across data that contained a useful method of controlling insect growth to prevent swamp fever.
The overseer was apoplectic. However, the discovery had not gone unnoticed by a third party. A Sith Lord by the name of Darth Lachesis happened to be visiting to inspect the latest crop of acolytes. Lachesis was highly placed in the KEC, the praetorian guard of the Imperium, and related to the Supreme Leader. She declared the trial to be complete, since the acolytes had procured a artefact and not wasted precious manpower. However, there was no time to celebrate the overseer's humiliation, for the Netherworld Event occured shortly thereafter. The Netherworld Crisis threw her life into turmoil. The discovery of a tome that told the true story of Vader's redemption caused civil war, which was soon followed by a slave revolt. Sibylla was among those raptured and dragged into the Netherworld. She up in the Behelian Canyon, a place of suffering and madness, almost losing her mind.
While there she caught sight of strange creatures, people and technologies unknown to her, but dismissed it when she managed to return as a fever vision. However, she returned with a crystal that she had found in the shadowy realm. It pulsed with preternatural power, for souls of the damned had been trapped inside it. Sometimes she received strange dreams when she touched it. When she returned, the Imperium had been changed. A schismatic group of 'Light Sith' and other enemies had risen up, throwing the Imperium into chaos. It was small comfort that the Dominion and the Republican Guard had been weakened, too.
Sibylla was treated with suspicion by the Imperials, but Lachesis took an interest in her. The young acolyte kept her revelations to herself. She suffered severe injuries during a bombing that left her mutilated. Her family decided to 'spare no expenses' to fix her. There was a darker reason for this, though Sibylla would not know this. The stultifying life she was forced to lead had left her sister Angela deeply unhappy and depressed. Her parents judged her mood swings and nonconformist behaviour to be a sign of 'hysteria'. Her father had his daughter lobotomised and committed to an institution.
Meanwhile, the doctor handling Sibylla's surgery was botching the job. However, a KEC doctor called Menkales noticed and took over. The young acolyte survived, but required a sort of proto-Vader assemblage to enable her to breathe. Her family was shocked by her appearance, and her father was disappointed upon being informed that she would be unable to bear children. However, while Chryssa and Georgios were there, Angela was not. Sibylla immediately enquired about her, and was assured by her father that all was well.
"Where is Angela? Is she safe? Is she all right?"
"Yes, my love. Dear Angela is resting well after her procedure. She needed treatment for her disorders and now she will live a tranquil life."
Even her other siblings did not know. Sibylla did not believe him, but could not investigate immediately. Acolytes like her were being rushed to the frontlines. The Light Sith had managed to take control over much of the heartland, but become embroiled in a destructive war with the Dominion. Sibylla fell in with Darth Lachesis, who commanded a loyalist faction that opposed the 'traitors'. The Sith Lord recognised her worth. Sibylla also struck up a friendship with Menkales, who was also a fanatical Humanist responsible for horrible atrocities against non-human civilians and prisoners.
She was a Sith who treated him as an intellectual equal, and in turn appreciated that he did not try to crudely hit on her. While she was recovering from her operation, her former friend Mideia tried to eliminate her because she was jealous of her position as an aide to Lachesis. Mideia used poison, but Sibylla played dead, using the Force, then suddenly awoke and disposed of her rival while she was basking in her victory. However, adjustment to her cybernetics was not easy for Sibylla. After some horrible moments including an infection from not having a sterile enough room, she came to accept and embrace her new nature though.
When Sibylla was able to leave the hospital she recovered Mideia's files. Apparently her fellow acolyte had been in the process of being consumed by the ghosts. She'd been desperate to become Lachesis' apprentice in the hope that this would give her access to the holocrons she needed to fix this. Sibylla was disappointed by this and bemoaned the carelessness. However, she found the documents useful. She wondered what else spirits could be used for.
Sibylla joined what amounted to Lachesis' personal army. The Sith Lord was a genocidal butcher who had presided over the murder of millions of innocents, but a leader respected by her soldiers because she took an interest in their wellbeing and did not waste their lives. Sibylla participated in the slaughter when the loyalist forces retook Adlerberg and brutally crushed the uprising in the Prosperity Quarter ghetto, where a rag-tag mixture of rebellious slaves, Republican Guard partisans and Light Sith fought a desperate last stand. The butchery was savage. Vaderite troops committed barbaric atrocities against starving partisans and civilians, including women and children.
Sibylla was disgusted by it...but more for its crudeness than the fact that it was evil. It made her ponder the inefficacy of the Vaderites' slave economy. The 'natural order' was restored under Darth Furcht as the new Supreme Leader. Sibylla got some recognition from her family for her actions on the battlefield. However, she was still denied contact with Angela, and her mother remained evasive when confronted. So Sibylla abducted the family's physician. Menkales helped 'make him talk', using his expertise as a doctor.
Thus Sibylla found the institution her sister was being held in. Breaking into the facility, she found her sister. To her shock, Angela's mental capacity had diminished to that of a two-year old child. She was unable to walk or speak intelligibly and was incontinent. But the real Angela was still buried inside the broken mind, and Sibylla felt that spark, being able to rudimentarily communicate with her telepathically. The wardens were not equipped to face a Sith and surrendered quickly. On the way out, she ran into her father and his men, who had been alerted. A standoff ensued.
However, she also encountered Lachesis, who had been monitoring her communications. Her presence broke the standoff. Sibylla's father, though powerful, could not go against the will of a Sith Lord and was forced to let Sibylla and her sister go, though not before disowning them. Sibylla had some parting words for the patriarch. "A day will come when you think yourself safe and happy, and suddenly your joy will turn to ashes in your mouth, and you'll know the debt is paid."
Lachesis arranged for Angela to be brought to a nursing home in the countryside, out of her family's reach. Sibylla knew all too well what the Sith was doing. She had realised that the acolyte's love for her sister was a string she could pull to control her. But she accepted the devil's bargain. The home was a cottage owned by Lachesis. Two matrons from the Amidala Corps were assigned to provide care to Angela, and the cottage received a guard detail. Angela had a car that could be used to take her for rides and a dog which she could take on walks. The damage to her mind remained, but she began to slowly improve while Sibylla searched for a more permanent cure. Unfortunately, the dark side was not suited for healing...and it was the darkness that was the only accepted form of Force usage among the Disciples.
Having been disowned by her father, Sibylla was cut off from her family's wealth. However, she was now the apprentice of a powerful Sith Lord. Most currency in the Imperium was fairly worthless, excluding specie. But Sith did not pax taxes. Simply being a member of the order opened doors. Inevitably businessowners and civil servants approached her to graft. She made a deal with the owner of a children's entertainment company and became part of a property-stacking scheme to make money. Her own master was the 'head' of seventeen different companies, from an art gallery to a munitions factory to a nerf farm. Everyone in a position of power did that sort of thing because corruption was endemic in the Imperium. Privately, Sibylla complained that the Vaderite tax system was inefficient and wasteful, then acknowledged that she profited from it. But then said that she would rather pay more if it actually went somewhere useful than into someone else's pockets.
Sibylla was able to repay Menkales for his help when she thwarted a Light Sith assassination attempt on the doctor of death. At the time Menkales had been appointed as camp doctor in Camp Progress. There he was responsible for carrying out selections. In essence, he decided which of the new inmates would be used for forced labour and which would be murdered. Moreover, he carried out cruel medical experiments. The Light Sith had sentenced him to death for his crimes. However, Sibylla was able to discover an infiltrator in the ranks and intercept suspiciouc communications. She arrived in time to save him when his groundcar was ambushed. It strengthened the alliance between him. He later gave her a tour of his 'workplace'. She was fully aware of what kind of man he was - and remained on good terms with him.
Sibylla found some of his conclusions questionable or pseudo-scientific. She also disdained the sadism of the camps...though not the principle. The slaves had risen up in rebellion during the Nether Crisis, and yet the Vaderites had simply restored the old order instead of trying something better because their whole system depended on it. The Vaderites had droids, but Tephriki designs were backward, and there was little incentive to produce better designs. The only way the old order could be maintained was through the whip, and yet this was the very thing that produced resistance and rebellion. All the embellished statistics could not hide the fact that productivity in the slave factories was low. She began to think of ways to improve things.
The young Sith took an interest in research of her own, building up on her studies at the academy. Unlike some Sith, she did actual research. Often horrible, but she let the evidence guide her. Her original mandate was to turn alien prisoners into living weapons through use of alchemy and cybernetics. To this end she conducted experiments on inmates. Some were prisoners of war, others civilians who had been rounded up during 'anti-partisan actions'. The standard modus operandi for such operation was to lay waste to villages that happened to be in areas partisans were believed to be operating in. More often than not, partisans escaped and the Vaderites murdered civilians and declared them to have been dangerous rebels. Sibylla abandoned the project when it proved unworkable. Other inmates were alien prisoners deemed 'useless eaters' because they were too sick for labour.
The test subjects remained the same, but Sibylla turned to a different concept. She had continued studying the crystal from the Netherworld. Spirits were a power source, but could they not be used for something other than simply boosting a Sith's strength in the Force? If spirits could be put into a magical item, could they not be put into machines or crystals to serve as a power source? Thus she started experimenting on prisoners to this end. Her research constituted a grave violation of medical ethics and a war crime.
Sibylla began to carry out trips to Force nexi and other areas on Tephrike strong in the Force to further her research. Each trip took a toll on her and tested her fortitude and willpower, but she always learned something. She was eventually able to construct simple device powered by a soul like a clock. "I believe their name was Tyrok....or Tynok. Whatever, they're not serving a purpose in death they did not in life. It keeps excellent time, better even than the atomic clock in Adlersberg."
During one such excursion she had a moment where she was presented with a choice of path, visions of the Light and Dark. The Light showed her toppling the Sith and joining with people from outer space to bring peace. The Dark showed her leading the Sith against them. Under the philosophy that it was better to rule in hell than serve in heaven...and because she had plans for the Sith, she choses to embrace the Dark.
This happened just before the arrival of a group of space people called Firemane. The Vaderites were able to observe the appearance of their starships. It was quite a shock, since the Tephriki believed that the rest of the galaxy had been wiped out by the Plague. Now Sibylla realised that what she'd seen in the Nether had not been fever dreams. She messaged her vision to Lachesis who deliberately informed only Darth Eisen and not the Supreme Leader, allowing Firemane to obliterate Castle Mayasaf with Furcht and most of his cabinet.
Like her master, Sibylla supported Eisen in the subsequent Vaderite civil war, using her cunning to deal with traitors in Imperials ranks who backed the 'wrong' Supreme Leader. Now her Master has become one of the most powerful Sith in the Humanist state. But Sibylla's ambitions go beyond that. She now knows that there is life in the stars. And she has made a new acquaintance in form of Kyriaki, the young clone of the space people.
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