Star Wars Roleplay: Chaos

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Private Something is Eating the Holocrons!

Now, Tython has been torn up, looted down to the bedrock, a dozen times in the last century alone. Messy world, Tython, and yet not remotely low on secret vaults set up by the truly prepped and paranoid and just plain smarter than most.

Behold one such vault: a dank cube cut from the bedrock in question, accessible by tunnels and shafts and Flesh Reaver warrens.

A tiny automated signal has gone out to the Caretaker of First Knowledge. A staticky image shows a hooded figure cramming shards of holocron into its mouth. Behind it, barely visible, a pale blue silhouette is shouting, mouth just as wide—


Corazona von Ascania Corazona von Ascania
 

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"Pffft-!"

Cora spat out her very first, very long awaited first sip of caf. It dribbled down her chin and even soaked a little into her tunic.

She played the message again, then again. The grainy image of something shoveling what appeared to be shattered holocron pieces beneath its hood was comically reflected in the shine of her wide eyes.

"Even a youngling knows better than to-"

Well, no, maybe not.

Tython, as always, had been a struggle. They'd chased the Dark Empire off in the end, which was what mattered. No sooner had she made it back to her ship did her holopad ping. Instead of settling in to a nice sonic shower and re-hydrated meal, Cora changed her tunic and set off for the temple.

Jorus Q. Merrill Jorus Q. Merrill
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Death felt cheap so far: unearned, undeserved for good and ill, disrespectful of everything left to do and everyone left behind, and empty. Oh, he'd died well enough on Vandelhelm, he remembered that much, and he'd used the lessons of the Five Priestesses to keep ahold of a coherent identity rather than dissipate, and those were better than virtually anyone got...but death felt cheap.

From time to time he found himself yanked into location and lucidity events tied to people and places that had meant a great deal to him. Moments with family and friends, sometimes. This time he'd appeared in a Tythonian holocron vault, recently gutted by some strange person who'd...chewed the holocrons to pieces and then left.

Stranger still, Jorus found he wasn't vanishing nor could he leave. He was, apparently, haunting.

Corazona von Ascania Corazona von Ascania
 
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With a spotty signal, it took her holopad a few minutes to load the map of Akar Kesh. Then, another five minutes or so to track the transmission to the underbelly of the beast.

The maze of underground passages was navigated in relative silence, save for the sharp breath taken as she stumbled back from the precipice of a collapsed tunnel. Cora marked that on the map, turned on her heel, and sought a different path.

The first vault she found was immaculately preserved, devoid of holocron crumbs. The second only held Max Rebo Band vinyls, also immaculately preserved.

Eventually, the third vault's heavy door would creak open. Cora appeared, hair tightly wound in a clip at the back of her head and sweat-slicked blonde strands clinging to the side of her face. She held out a glowrod, casting the dark rings around her eyes into deeper shadows than she would have liked.

"Oh-"

As she laid eyes on the apparition, Cora paused. Her gaze swept to the ground, eyeing the scattered remains of the holocrons, then back up. Her eyes narrowed, like a school marm about to admonish an unruly student.

"Those cannot have tasted good."


Jorus Q. Merrill Jorus Q. Merrill
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During Corazona von Ascania Corazona von Ascania 's no doubt heroic journey down here, Jorus had taken the time to think through what little he'd experienced since death and his unexpected apparition. Frustration and boredom lacked their biological components just now but the rest of it sucked.

For one, he couldn't actually touch anything. Couldn't pick up the shards, rectify overturned shelves or plinths, nothing. So he sat in the mess and waited and thought about eternity.

Corazona's arrival was a relief as visceral as anything he'd encountered while dead, even the moment when he'd appeared to find something gnawing on Holocrons. He'd yelled quite loudly and maybe startled it off. Or maybe it just wasn't hungry anymore.

"Told it to use hot sauce," he said, rolling with the erroneous impression. "I scrubbed'em pretty well but could never get out the general Jedi funk."
 

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"The Jedi fu-"

Cora wrinkled her nose. Now that the thought was upon her, this particular chamber did smell rather musty.

She took a cautious step closer, peering through the glowrod's light. There was something…transparent about the vault's newest addition.

"Apologies for my lack of manners. Corazona von Ascania, Jedi Knight."

A slight bow at the waist was delivered while she maintained eye contact. "Who might you be? And how did you get in here?"

The door had been sealed shut. Some Jedi had the ability to phase through objects, but his pallid appearance suggested a more otherworldly approach.

Unless there was, of course, another entrance she hadn’t seen.

Jorus Q. Merrill Jorus Q. Merrill
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"Jorus," said Jorus. "Von, uh, Merrill. I built this vault. Well, built's a strong word. Thermal detonator and a nice disruptor for the corners. Guess it meant enough to me — not the vault, the project, hiding all the holocrons — meant enough that when it got raided I showed up here. Wasn't on purpose.

"You got the flash from the camera back there? You see anything of what did it? I'm not sure what I saw."

Corazona von Ascania Corazona von Ascania
 

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Jorus. Jorus Merrill. It took a moment for that to sink in, for her to match lines of text in an old tome to the name.

"Oh. Oh goodness! I'm sorry for intruding-"


Cora sent a nervous glance to one corner of the vault, then the other, then back to the spectral form of Jorus. It was rare that she had the opportunity to meet someone from the Order's past who was dead, and she'd stumbled into what she'd assumed to be his private space.

That, and Force ghosts still unnerved her a little.

"I have- ah-"

Sweaty fingers fumbled for her holopad. A few taps and swipes brought up the still image of the holocron muncher, face obscured by the shadow of its hood.

"This is what I received, and what led me here. Whatever it is still has to be in here, right?"

Jorus Q. Merrill Jorus Q. Merrill
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Even seeing was a different experience when dead. Less...flat. Less blinking.

"That fits what I saw. I don't know what kind of being that is."

He squinted out of habit; squinting was irrelevant to this state of existence.

"Are those tentacles around the mouth? Wait, no, they're...ahh, I think I remember. Do the words Selab or Raskava mean anything to you yet?"

Corazona von Ascania Corazona von Ascania
 

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"Selab…" Cora tilted her gaze up towards the ceiling in thought. "That's in the Hapes cluster, yes?"

With all the hubbub over there - the murder of the Hapan Prince during his own wedding and subsequent terrorist attacks - she'd come across more than one holomap outlining the planets that might feel aftershocks.

"Raskava," there was another pause as she thought. "I am not familiar with, no. Which sector is that in?"

Jorus Q. Merrill Jorus Q. Merrill
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He explained. She was the Caretaker of First Knowledge, after all.

He explained the Order of the Selab, the secret society of multipartisan archivists, and suggested she might already know some members.

He explained their main rivals, the equally quiet Raskava Order, the holocron eaters, as well as he understood them.

"...and the irony is, they've got the same goal."

Corazona von Ascania Corazona von Ascania
 

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Jorus explained, and Cora listened. As far as she'd come, she would still always be a student. Her attention was silent and rapt, the bearing of someone who wished that they could be taking physical notes right now.

"...Goodness," she sighed.

"It sounds like the Selab are preservers of knowledge, while the Raskava are hoarders of it. The destruction of holocrons and records..." Cora idly scratched behind her ear and pursed her lips. "It's downright uncouth."

Two secret societies, both after knowledge. One lighter, one darker. The plot of star-crossed lovers practically wrote itself.

"You said the one from the message has tentacles around the mouth?"

Cora threw one hand behind her, and the vault door closed. That left them in the glow of her light rod, and the light thrown off by Jorus' spectral form.

Jorus Q. Merrill Jorus Q. Merrill
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"Well..."

Finding a Raskava holocron-eater, a secret society member who'd left here some time ago by this point, was a puzzle with no clues. Some people would leave it there. Jorus figured he wouldn't be one of them.

The obvious question, then, was where to find clues.

"This is Tython - do the Jedi have any decent sensors in orbit? Passing ships? What year is it anyway?"

Corazona von Ascania Corazona von Ascania
 

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Cora gave the apparition a look of mild confusion. It slowly melted into some semblance of understanding.

Just how long had he been gone for?

"Well, that's…we're in 902 ABY…" she trailed, gesturing vaguely with her lightrod. "The Dark Empire took control of Tython a few years back. Either their strength waned, or they stretched themselves too thin - whatever it was, the Jedi have only recently take Tython back. Very recently. There's still a lot of work to be done with cleansing the surrounding forests, and rebuilding the part of the temple that collapsed, and making sure that the archives…"

Cora's measured pace started to pick up as she rattled off a to-do list. She stopped before she could start stumbling over her words.

"So no sensors or ships aside from personal craft that I'm aware of, no. A smaller force of Jedi just chased the Empire remnants off."

Jorus Q. Merrill Jorus Q. Merrill
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"Heard about that battle kicking off. Hell, would've been days, weeks at most since I was in Vandelhelm gearing up to try getting through Darth Empyrean Darth Empyrean 's Blackwall — and that's where I died, see. So that's a relief — I'm not...drifting decade to decade. Nobody tells you how to live like this. Barely tell you how to make it happen at all."

He'd been talking to himself for the most part, he figured, and he refocused. Dead, focus felt different. The challenges were different. Basic had no words for them.

"There's other ways than sensor records to look at the past. What happened in this room, which way they went. I never knew'em, just in theory. You?"

Corazona von Ascania Corazona von Ascania
 

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"Oh," Cora said quietly. Her expression softened. "I'm sorry to hear that." She'd offered condolences to the loved ones and comrades of the deceased a sobering number of times, but never to the dead.

It was a little awkward, facing a ghost like this, so she turned her eyes to the scattered holocron bits as he spoke.

"I'm not a particularly...potent user of psychometry, but I can…"

She crouched ran a finger along the jagged edge of a metallic shard. She felt ripples in the Force, like someone dropping a stone into the far edge of a pond. Nothing came to her, not until she clenched her entire hand around the holocron fragment.

It hit her in a flash of face tentacles and a flurry of movement through the door. A maze of tunnels and the arching stonework above them. Cora squealed and dropped the shard.

The brief visions evaporated as she bolted upward. Cheeks tinted pink, she brushed the remnants of saliva off onto her tunic.

"Er…apologies. Whoever did this was a quarren, maybe? What I saw wasn't exactly clear, but I believe that they did leave this room."

A wave of her hand, and the vault door creaked open.

"If I might ask...what is it you were you doing on Vandelhelm?"

Almost immediately, she felt the urge to react that statement. She didn't. Cora thought it rude to ask someone how they'd died, and now she wasn't sure that she wanted to know.

Jorus Q. Merrill Jorus Q. Merrill
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"Quarren rings a bell. Quarren..." he mumbled, trying to get out through the door and finding that he could. Not trapped here, then. For the moment, the weeping bedrock tunnel only went one way. He went that way.

"Was visiting friends from Woostri in one of the refugee camps, the rough ones that your Alliance needs to fix and fix fast. Half-trained Sith in a mask started cutting. Must've killed twenty, thirty by the time I caught up, and a dozen more before I ended it. Don't think I put him down for good, though."

Corazona von Ascania Corazona von Ascania
 

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Cora trailed after Jorus, her lips pursing into a frown.

"Yes I…I've read the reports," she admitted quietly. "And many such. Sith have taken to embedding themselves into refugee populations. Hardly a new tactic, but an insidious one all the same."

A droplet of stale water struck her nose, which she wrinkled. The loss of Woostri seemed to echo throughout the galaxy, causing ripples of pain that the Sith capitalized on.

"Do you have a favorite flower? If I ever make it to Vandelhelm, I'll leave some there for you."

Jorus Q. Merrill Jorus Q. Merrill
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