The Blade Shadow's Curse (PM First)

[Tanith Alde]

Every child in the Empire has heard this tale before. About the cursed Sith Girl, who felt her heart no more. So sad and lorn, the helpless girl, Safiriel was her name. She ventured out to find a friend and learn about her Bane. For many years, Safiriel traveled through the Stars, Determined to find someone, if only they would understand. But even when Safiriel, stood upon the ledge of hope, her hopes would disappoint her, and she would remain alone. But then the curse began to whisper in her ear, and would confirm what was the girl’s biggest fear. It pledged that never shall someone become her friend,It pledged that she shall be alone until her end.The sorrow and despair,Became too much to bear. The moment when Safiriel realized what she had done,Too late it was, for her, for them, the evil curse had won.The anger and the anguish overwhelmed her fragile soul,And caused a wicked backlash that she never could control.

 

[Tanith Alde]

In a small, barely noticeable structure on an airlesss, lifeless moon orbiting a nondescript methane planet in the galaxy’s outer rim, two Sith met. The younger one waited patiently for her master to speak. The senior lord, his steely eyes sunken in his aging face, intoned a single word: “Talus” The apprentice raised her eyebrows. “Talus, Master? It is a sparsely populated world, hardly the most promising candidate for our search.” Young Safiriel mentally reviewed her scant knowledge of Talus: a small moon where colonists from Corellia had made a home. Her master, Darth Ghast, replied with a skull-like smile: “True enough. But now the situation is different. The Galactic Republic continues to expand its borders. Talks have begun – cautiously, tentatively – on the subject of … incorporation.”

 

[Tanith Alde]

Safiriel recalled how Lord Ghast had first explained it to her long ago. There could never be more than two Sith Lords known to eachother at a time, but there must also never be fewer. The Sith lineage was too precious to imperil by allowing its continuation ever to rest on one person alone. Thus the training of a doens or hundreads of Sith Lord must begin while the first is still alive, so that upon the Master’s death the Sith-in-training will be ready to step immediately step into power.. Many of the prospects Safiriel had brought to Ghast had already failed or been found wanting, serving useful purposes for a time until they were disposed of.

 

[Tanith Alde]

Above all, the new recruit must come from outside Republic space. Within the Republic, Force-sensitive children were identified early by the Silver Sanctum. Whether such children were eventually trained as Jedi or not, their identities were recorded and their activities tracked by the exceedingly thorough Jedi intelligence service. A Sith Lord could not afford to come to the attention of the Jedi. Sufficiently advanced practitioners of the Sith arts might learn to shield their abilities from Jedi awareness, as Darth Ghast had done and as his youthful apprentice Safiriel was beginning to do, but this would do them little good if they had already been identified as Force-users when young.

 

[Tanith Alde]

The need to recruit from the Outer Rim had never proven much of a handicap for the Sith before, for space is large and there were always plenty of prospects. But that was before Darth Ghast had developed a plan far more ambitious than his own master, Darth Kayos, could ever have conceived. Lord Ghast’s plan was nothing less than a total takeover of the Republic.This had of course been a hope passed down from Sith to Sith for many centuries, but few Sith Lords had been single-minded enough to sacrifice too much of their pursuit of power on a smaller scale – for themselves, in their own lifetimes – to advance the long-term goal of galactic dominion by their successors. But Darth Ghast was an embittered man, twisted by a past his disciple had never dared ask about, and it had left him with a burning hatred of the Republic that took precedence over the personal pursuit of power.

 

[Tanith Alde]

In order for Ghast’s plan to succeed, the next Sith Lord had to become a member of the Galactic Senate. But such a Senator would have to be elected by a world that held Republic membership; and few planets would choose a naturalised citizen over a native as their Senatorial representative; nor would Sith hypnotic techniques be employed effectively on an entire planetary electorate. Hence the next Sith Lord would have to be born outside the Republic, yet native to a Republic world. This would be possible only in the case of a planet that had newly joined the Republic. Now Safiriel could see why Talus was an ideal spot to search for the new Sith candidate.