Private So Close to Something Better Left Unknown

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

"The Levantine Sanctum, these sectors were called. Not much more than a memory now, for those who enjoy maps. It's territory that's always prided itself on..." Ashin flinched as the Sith tattoo artist added another frenetic little scorpion to her shoulder. She pushed past the pain and focused on the view from her Kalrassin-class Naboo yacht: Arda, an oceanic world, a quiet backwater. It had been an old friend's homeworld.

The tattoo artist was Massassi and took this work seriously. He deployed and recaptured the two-tailed branding scorpions rapidly, letting each sink its inkstingers precisely into Ashin's shoulder in a staccato pattern. The technique was sixty centuries old and largely forgotten. He knew a thing or two, she figured, about identity and memory.

"Prided itself?" he said absently.

"On avoiding the great wars. Exploration, expansion, connection — but then they let the Silver Jedi in and it was the beginning of the end."

The tattoo artist said nothing. Jedi had eradicated most of his people in at least two genocides. Most Sith hated the Jedi because they were easy to hate. A Massassi had actual reasons. They'd discussed it once when he was reworking the Naga Sadow Dark Lord mark on her sternum, the same mark all her bodies had worn for seventy years lest she forget herself.

He pulled the last scorpions away into their little boxes. "I'd like to visit someday," he said, gesturing out the window. "It looks beautiful." Which was, perhaps, a request to spare the world, wary of her unknown intentions.

" I'm not here to burn it, Jaccath," Ashin said, "only to isolate it. I have too much in the area and the witches of this world, the one called Token Waters in particular... they could challenge my intentions. I intend to test a ritual that will cut or block one of the hyperroutes from Arda. If it works, they and their Jedi allies have far less access to areas of significance to me. If they choose to oppose me...well, I'll have learned something of value before my plans reach a vulnerable stage. And frankly, either way, a rival who could challenge me in ritual space is rare. Even exciting."

The fresh tattoo on her shoulder was a swirling vortex of Sith glyphs. It was like a hurricane, a Force Storm, or a simple whirlpool.

***

Hyperspace warped across a swathe of the Arda system, a curtain of slowly growing distortion. Her yacht had placed carved and blood-soaked totems in space, light-minutes apart, connected by unfathomably diffuse skeins of frozen droplets. Now she sat in the same gallery chair where she'd taken her tattoo. She chanted. The chant would take hours.

Brooke Waters

 

[Brooke Waters]

WE WOULD ALSO ACCEPT UMBRELLA AS AN ANSWER.

The ship, the Nautilos was the new vessel that Brooke had selected many a months ago. A vessel that was half alive, and half machine. The woman had been around the galaxy a bit and this was something she located, and really, rescued, from a nearby world with the Mandalorian Cato Fett . Today the witch was aboard with a Selkath and Corellian. She was working on training people now, and that was something interesting.

Her Corellian pilot was one of the cousins of Coren Starchaser, a connection through the Tide of Light, which was becoming more of her organization. The Nautilos was arriving back home from the Oasis.

“I mean, I suppose… But I honestly don’t know what a chimney is.” The Selkath shrugged. He was helping Brooke on some of her transplanting of the blue corals on several worlds. He’d proved himself trustworthy and that was why he was one, aboard this vessel and not meeting her where she needed him, and two, taking him into the Levantine space.

She had not been a Witch during the time of the Sanctum. As a Witch she had only known it following the Silver Jedi merger, and that which should have come.

“So, a chimney is a stack for smoke from cooking or more archaic forms of warming houses.” The human took a sip of Whyren’s and nodded. “You have those on Chandrilla, doncha boss?”

Brooke looked up from the flimsi text she was working on. Another spellbook, and jotting thoughts down of the past.

WE ARE HAVING TROUBLE ACCESSING ARDA. The ship stated as it pulled itself from hyperspace. Brooke got up and walked to the command module. Sure, she had the Starchaser family here to help fly, but Nautilos was a chariot of ancient Arda. The transition was smooth, and she saw, they were a few light seconds out.

“What is it?” She asked, before reaching out in the Force.

Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

"Captain-"

That was Jaccath at the door of the observation deck. The standard notification was a light and a tone from the arm of her chair - and, she saw, he'd done that. So this must be important. She slowed her chant but didn't stop; she turned the chair away from the broad viewport and her view of Arda, and waited for him to explain.

"A ship's been pulled from hyperspace as expected," said Jaccath, who, for convenience, was also her pilot. "It's close, almost within weapons range, and it's nothing the systems register as normal. A pretty shuttle or something more."

He stiffened at the door, and a moment later Ashin felt it too. A mind was probing. There were...incongruities, paradoxes of youth and age, carefree and implacable, the sea depths and the stars. A thrill of rare fear ran through her.

She stopped the chant. The interdiction ritual, half-done, would weaken and dissipate over the coming hours unless she resumed it. She left her comfortable chair and slipped past Jaccath's bulky frame, then down into the yacht's cockpit, to a somewhat less comfortable seat.

The sensor contact looked like nothing she'd seen before, or nothing she could remember. Taking half a dozen bodies over a century could sand the edges off things.

She raised shields but didn't arm her yacht's twin laser cannons or approach. Otherwise, she waited. The two ships were moving at similar relative velocity and would drift apart eventually, unless one took action.


Brooke Waters

 

[Brooke Waters]

The screens that she had were definitely rudimentary, it was more of a feeling aboard this ship than anything that was solid. It was why she decided to start trusting Tomas Starchaser, he was a Forcer and a pilot. A bit more of a gearhead than a true pilot, but for shuttling, it allowed her a bit of time to work. And the fact that he could navigate as well as a Starchaser was a plus. Though Nautilos did argue a lot.

But the semi-living ship was ancient and time had changed the galaxy. Especially the space around Arda, as she was seeing now. The blonde bit her lip as she tried to take a deep breath but her Selkath coral farmer Ako, a little too on the nose for a name, but he was named after his profession spoke up in the wet sounding voice.

"What is going on?"

"I don't know. Give me a moment…" Brooke all but ordered as the Selkath moved to check the readout on the locker aboard the ship. A tank of blue corals.

The blonde stood near the forward viewscreen and closed her eyes again, muttering a spell in a combination Paecian and an ancient Ardan language, blue smoke, almost aquatic in its own nature forming around her hands, and for anyone watching, out into space.

It was more the intent of her magick that was being displayed.

"Someone is doing something."

"FARSEEKER, A SHIP IS ON THE LONG RANGE SCANNER."

That was when Brooke saw it, a Naboo vessel? Out here?

Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

"-is doing something"

"Doing what?" said Jaccath behind her.

Ashin shook her head in frustration and zoomed in on a screen that depicted the strange vessel. A nimbus or atmosphere leak surrounded it, or some kind of spatial distortion...no, come to think of it, she had no idea what that bluish smoke was. It looked like fog on the ocean.

"I suspect," she said slowly, "it's witchcraft, trying to get through my ritual's interference in some way. If so it'll succeed; they'll get to the planet. My ritual is very large and this is localized. But let's see how long we can hold out. Buckle in, just in case they close to weapons range."

She began the chant again, harsh and urgent, strengthening the interdiction ritual.

Brooke Waters

 

[Brooke Waters]

The fact that someone was out here, in the Levant space? That was a surprise in its own. Arda was a quiet world, well, nowadays it was. Brooke knew of so many sunken settlements that it had a metropolis vibe in the past. Well, she surmised it, for those that were there. And there was its own sense of a Force history. A traditional all its own. They didn't use kyber, but the blue-green obsidian of the world seemed to have its own power. Stone power, ish… But definitely something similar, and something she could feel the power of.

Who was out here searching these worlds?

She could feel the presence, but it was masked… deep? Something was in the way and Brooke just couldn't quite… peel that layer back. She was muttering more, her hands moving into her bag as she lifted out a small stone, one polished by the sea, clear, and pristine. At the same time, the Nautilos was uploading a grabbed vision of the Naboo ship.

"Naboo ship… thats… odd." Tomaas said as he looked at it. Spinning the holographic version, the hologram clear in the mist that the ship presented for it to take ti.

Old tech, but it worked still.

Brooke was casting into the seeing stone, it was dark but starting to lighten, her goal was to see who was aboard that other ship. Failing that? She'd pick this ritual out and get to the surface. Someone had to protect this world and its secrets.

Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

The situation, so far as Ashin could tell, remained unchanged. The Lanvarok Whisper's sensors were simpler than she'd like, and somewhat befuddled. There was, however, a SIARC probe drone aboard with far better sensors so far as other starships were concerned. Since the moment allowed it, or seemed to, she opened the yacht's small deployment bay and the SIARC shot out like a-

Well, like a large warhead. It wasn't, nor was it on a collision course, but she stood ready in case the other ship took it as an escalation.

At this range, good data began coming in rapidly. What was that ship?

Brooke Waters

 

[Brooke Waters]

There were always other options to fighting. Brooke tended to lean into them. She was much more the fight-to-run-away type of Witch. Her Clan Mother was okay with that, and why she was named Farseeker. The money she had taken up through some of her, shall they all call it fundraising? That was she was doing to help afford the settlements she was placing. Between that and some archeological finds. Honestly, it was all to find places for people.

INCOMING PROJECTILE The ship stated as Brooke continued to mutter her spell, the stone started to glow more, less dark, and more with colors coming in, but it was taking a moment… She didn’t recognize the people aboard the ship. But she did recognize what they were doing.

As the projectile was incoming, it seemed to not be on a missile-type course for them, but she could already feel Tomaas moving to set the shields up. Not that Nautilos needed the nudging, but the ship felt that it was better for those traveling to be in control, and since Brooke was merely using the other Starchaser as a means to an end? It made sense.

They’d get a view of a ship that was modern but ancient. Gold and sandstone, with a power source more strong than most its size, but the outside was clean, and seemed to run on a sense of growing and changing its own exoskeleton. All the while Ashin would feel a probing as Brooke finally got through any defense to see who she was up against.

Listening however, was another matter…

Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

She had the sense that she was being perceived - sitting there in the yacht's main chair, watching the sensor data scroll in - but whether that perception was real or just an instinct based on many past equivalent situations, who could say. Any half-competent Master reaching out would feel her for what she was: old and cold and Sith or close enough. She was not hiding today.

"That's no mainstream yard's work," she said, mostly to herself. "We're far enough out that it could be Wild Space tech. Nothing I'd cross in a fair fight, not flying this. Bad luck they're so close."

She recalled the probe; it looped back into a loose orbit around her yacht, a holding pattern. INCIS probes had a few applications she could bring to bear, depending on the situation.

She began her chant again.

Brooke Waters

 

[Brooke Waters]

There was a lot going on here, but the thing was, Brooke didn’t know how to pick through it. Was she supposed to get through this with the Force? She knew that it’d be the main solution. The challenge was that Brooke knew she could do a lot with the Force, but if this was someone who she thought it was? Well, that could get her found out.

As she looked into the orb, there were only two people aboard, but that one was someone beyond the level of Master. The last time she’d felt that level with someone? It was the Clan Mother, and Coren Starchaser, two very different beings, but this one? She had something in her. The big challenge was hiding herself farther from this one… But she had to get to Arda, had to do a few things.

“Ship, lets proceed, please…” Brooke stated. The colors in the cockpit of the Nautilos were changing from the still white-and-gold lights of it sitting to the blue-green glow of the obsidian. The color of the crystals moving the ship. Brooke could hear the chant at that point.

The sound in the Force. The language was foreign, but the feeling of the Force spooling… She had to cut through this. A song of navigation was what she came up with, pulling her spellbook out. The navigation in space and on the sea were similar. She hoped to find the path through…

Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

A faraway and eerie song shivered in the hull panels, in the console. Ashin's chant faltered but she grinned: the anticipated contest was here. And she knew she would lose. She'd aimed to interdict a vast swathe of space. Of course there'd be ways to punch through such diffuse ambition. She had no good metaphor off the cuff. She just meant to make that inevitable victory costly.

And to that end-

She broke from the chant that strengthened the interdiction and shifted to another incantation. The Dark Side clouded everything, or had that potential. An obscuring of farsight, prophecy, instinct, certainty. She hopes to steal her enemy's bearings.

Brooke Waters

 

[Brooke Waters]

As a witch of the sea, her songs were not typically eerie, not to most. They were enchanting, but dark. The type that lured beings to their death upon rocks. Out into the depths of seas and space. What she was focusing was trying to cut through whatever this dark sider was doing. Brooke didn’t believe for an instant that this person was purely Sith. It’d be like believing she herself was of Jedi lineage, or that the Starchaser clan was strictly Jedi.

“I have a path… I think…” Brooke started to speak as the ship considered her words, and Tomaas was getting to his station.

“Are you sure, Waters?” He never did call her by her first name. The Witch could feel the man reaching for her in the Force, and she had what felt like a path.

That was, until the darkness crept in. Crushing depths and darkness. Shaking her head, the blonde groaned. “Hold…” She was muttering the spell, and reaching to that part inside her that was the Force, not the part that she needed to coax and cultivate, but the pure part of the Force, that blue-light within her… Trying to clarify what was ahead of her. What was around her.

Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

"I think it must be her. Brooke Waters , the one they call Token. There are few witches from the old days and fewer still who operated in Levantine space."

Not at this level. Not witches who could forge ahead through Sith sorcery, through waves of darkness in the old style.

Ashin wiped sweat off her forehead with the cuff of her shipsuit sleeve and considered her next invocation or ritual carefully. She thought, too, of closing range and opening fire, but that strange ship could have any number of capabilities and Ashin was flying a yacht.

The goal, she reminded herself, was not to kill and not even to win. The goal was to test her interdiction ritual, and the secondary goal was to pick up the far-flung carved icons, drifting in space light-minutes apart, that had made it possible.

To that end, she switched back to her initial chant, refocusing on the interdiction ritual. She was conscious of Jaccath's silent attention as Ashin spoke his people's language, used his people's traditional skills.

 

[Brooke Waters]

She shivered whens he heard her nickname, the one that stuck with her until she broke away from the Jedi many a year ago. The one her father had given her. Primed because she was the token girl in her group of friends on Pamarthe. When she was visiting her mother’s family on Chandrilla, she’d gone by Brooke, more formal and proper. But on Pamarthe, where she learned her tricks of handling boats and airspeeders? She was Token.

When she began learning the Force? Token.

When it was clear that there was more to her handling of it than a Jedi would rightfully admit, or support? She was still Token.

Now she kept that name secret, kept it safe lest others get a fuller understanding of her past, and her brushes with the dark side veiled in arcane mysticism of the Witch path. It took a moment for the name to dig into her mind, to bubble to the surface of her thoughts.

Ashin.

That gave Brooke pause, pulled her from her spell casting. Looking to her crew and the ship at large. “We may have a problem. I am going to get us to Arda but… this one, I’ve heard her story.” Well, in parts.

The Nautilos was pushed back as the interdiction ritual began again. Brooke took a moment and changed tack. A deep breath, and pulling a small bottle from her pack she poured it on the ground, in a circle, and knelt. She began chanting again. The ship knew this spell and knew it well.

As it began shaking, panels on the exterior began lighting up in hypnotic patterns. The ship would handle it while Brooke continued her spell.

WITH ME PILOT TOMAAS. The ship ordered as it began to throttle up, heading towards the yacht it could see. They would move at sublight, hoping to distract the yacht’s vision but bring Brooke closer, to see if she could confirm the intent on the crew

Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

Something shifted in the Force, but Ashin couldn't put her finger on it.

"Captain, they're approaching," Jaccath murmured, just loud enough to hear through her chant.

The orbiting probe was a useful asset and an expensive one. Still chanting, she recalled it into the yacht's small bay. That required lowering the shields for a few seconds.

Would Brooke Waters take advantage of the opportunity? What weapons did that strange ship mount, anyway?

 

[Brooke Waters]

The Force was a tool. It was the tool for Brooke to get through life. It saved her once and it was scratching that itch she could feel deep within herself that she couldn’t quite put a word to.

It was why she was still after Arda. The blue coral farm she had. The one she was cultivating to spread around the galaxy. She single-handedly was the reason Blue Coral Divers were not just a Dathomiri clan.

As her ship was moving past the yacht, the blinking lights were hiding the ships true motive. Scanning and life sign reading. All the while Brooke’s chant was to push a message into the mind of the crew.

“These worlds are under my protection.” Was the intent of the push, whether it was taken that was, as it was more feeling than words, was another all together different matter.

@ashin carde varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

“These worlds are under my protection.”

"So she'd like to talk...Jaccath, take the wheel."

Ashin switched gears mentally. Outside of training, it had been some time since she put forth this much effort in so many rapidly shifting directions. She felt like she'd run miles. The self-imposed constraints only added to that: she'd gone from research to suppression to research again to... politics?

As Jaccath replaced her, she returned to the viewing gallery's more comfortable chair. It gave her a beautiful vista: Arda, the stars, the oncoming ship. She tapped into yet another rare skill, one she knew far better than the others she'd done in the last hour: the power of Vectivus.

Her fingers tightened painfully against the chair as something like a seizure rippled through her. And then she was elsewhere. Specifically, the Force phantom she'd projected into Brooke Waters ' ship, a tangible simulacrum of herself. This power keyed off another's life force without long term harm: Waters' pilot fell instantly asleep at the wheel.

Today Ashin appeared as she usually did: black armourweave robes and the mask of Anger.

Force, but Waters looked young.

"He'll be fine," Ashin said by way of introduction.

 

[Brooke Waters]

She was not sure what she expected. She lived a life with the Jedi and the Witches. She’d seen Force illusions and teleportation. She’d been known to do both. But whatever this was? It was different. The blonde scooted back from where she was as Tomaas fell and she could hear the Selkath Ako go eerily quite too.

Brooke’s mind went to her corals in their stasis chambers. Ready to be cultivated. Part of her life’s work.

“Every living being on this vessel better be safe, specter.” Brooke had heard tale of Ashin Varanin. But never laid eyes on.

Perhaps she’d be as surprised as Ashin was of Brooke. Time, or the Force, or something in the Force was kind to the blonde. Brooke’s hand was on a small staff, one that when enchanted would become her clans Lance d’Azur. A bit big in this space but the appearance would be enough to distract.

“What are you doing out here?” Her voice calm.

Ashin Cardé Varanin

 

[Ashin Cardé Varanin]

Lies and half truths had their respective moments. Ashin saw no reason for them now.

"Testing a ritual of interdiction. I'll warn you: my being here anchors on your pilot's life. Strike me down and he'll pay the price instantly. But I see no reason for that kind of escalation. This has been a useful contest in its way, but neither of us has so much as powered weapons yet."

She looked pointedly at what she could see of the strange ship's controls.

"So far as I'm aware."

Brooke Waters

 

[Brooke Waters]

There were always times for lies. But first they should allow for smiles and genuine chatter. Lies only was followed by gunfire. And as much as she had once been a bounty hunter, that was the last type of interaction she sought.

She would be foolish to not prepare when someone steeped in this much dark side presented themselves. Even if her response was against the Sanctum code. Trust people to make the right call.

“You haven’t cast on me yet.” A simple movement of her hand and the staff that would summon the weapon vanished.

“We do have weapons systems. But no. They’re not on. Why are you interdicting this world?”

Ashin Cardé Varanin