Darth Abyss
Eldritch
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To set up a mix of temple and academy hidden below the sea of Katarr
- Image Credit:
- Canon: N/A
- Links:
Hydrostatic bubble
Defiance
SETTING INFORMATION
- Structure Name: The Drowned Archives
- Classification: Dark Side Temple and Academy
- Location: Katarr, below the Black sea, East of Defiance
- Affiliation: Darth Abyss
- Accessibility: The Drowned Archives are hidden below the sea, and their location is unknown to all besides a handful selected few that Abyss deemed worthy of entering his cursed halls. To even reach them it is nessescary to dive into the black sea until the bottom.
- Security: The main means of security is its hidden location. The only other one is its dark aura that can keep those blinded by light away if they fear the darkness.
- Description: The Actual Archives are a symmetric cube framed by monoliths and pillars, build of stones of a dark grey. While the dark side has kept the overall structure intact, there are many cracks and broken of parts that make the Archives seem more like a drowned ruins then like a place that still is used by the living. The Archives are shielded below a hydrostatic bubble that keeps the sea from swallowing the building another time. Yet there still remains a glimpse of water around the building even inside the bubble.
Near the archives is a smaller, newer structure, a metal fortress with lights that places a dim, ghostly purple shimmer on the old stones nearby.. This little station was build to house the handful of faithful that are allowed to visit and explore the ancient, sunken temple.
POINTS OF INTEREST
The Halls of lost Knowledge
Once the Halls of lost Knowledge were one of the most complete libraries on the wisdom of the force that the former inhabitants of katarr had build. The force kept many books free from the decay of water and time, yet there is still a lot of long lost knowledge that once had been kept there. The books that remain have found their final home among bookshelves reaching far into the air, some of them so high that their are almost impossible to see by the naked eye.
After Abyss reclaimed the Archives many books of his own collection found their way into the cursed library, works of the sith, the nightsisters, the shapers, the sorcerers of Rhand and many others sharing their home with what the Miraluka wrote about their own discoveries.
Even the electronic systems of the Archives are partly intact, kept together by the trademark reverse engineering and makeshift solutions of Abyss people. Most what the Miraluka stored there is gone, but like the library it was refilled by the tainted knowledge gathered by the Mindeater.
Some say that the books whisper to those that visit the Archives, telling dark tales of the day in which katarr became devoid of any live.
The Sunken Path
To walk the sunken path is a challenge of its own, and only those with a strong gift for the dark side of the force are able to see what path leads to the Halls of lost knowledge, all others will only find death or dead ends.
There are many things that can be found along the sunken path. Bones and other remains left by those that came before, lost books that disappeared from the library without a trace and relics of the Miraluka that are now burdened with the curse of the dark side.
The Abyss
The mark such a lose left in the force still echoes into the current age, made stronger after the Netherworld crisis. While the veil between the dead and the living is still not thin enough to be traversed without the aid of twisted rituals, the two worlds are far less apart here than normally. Inside the Abyss it is quite more possible to contact the spirits caught in the nether than anywhere else in the archives.
The Mindeater chose the Abyss as his tainted throne room on Katarr, the hall of emptiness were the Eldritch being retreats to when he desires solitude beyond the darkness that the Black sea grants the whole structure. No one is allowed to enter inside without a invitation of the Sith lord, and those that tried have found a fate worse than death.
It is the only place where the bubble that protects the building is so close that the main window creates the illusion of being departed from the sea only by a single piece of brittle glass.
Black Sea Academy
A small station build besides the Archives, meant to hold up to 50 people at the same time. There is not much to be found inside the Black Sea Academy, only a handful of chambers for studies, training, mediation and sleeping, a storage area to support those living below the sea for a while, a generator that keeps the station supplied with energy and a docking area for those that travel to the archives.
HISTORICAL INFORMATION
The Drowned Archives were once a tranquil place blessed by the light, build by the Miraluka in the ancient ages, standing as a symbol of hope near the edges of the sea. For millennia the books and stones were guarded by its creators, first as temple, later as an ancient memory of their history, a place where they could call upon the wisdom of those that came before them.
When the eldritch nightmare, to many only known as the lord of hunger, rose during the horrors of the first jedi purge katarr and its people were erased, devoured by the hollow abomination to fill the void that raged one within Darth Nihilus. The events of that day tainted all of Katarr in darkness for eternity and beyond, but what is only a lingering, creeping echo upon the world is a dark emptiness inside the archives.
As the ages passed on, parts of Katarr's surface were swallowed by the black sea, including the archives. Yet the books and stones are almost untouched by the water it drowned in, kept together only by the darkness that was created when many gifted with the blessing that became the curse that brought their end lost their life to the endless hunger of Nihilus.
When Darth Abyss stumbled over the ancient structure at the bottom of the black sea he could hear it calling for him. Whatever it had once been, by now it had become a symbol of the eldritch evil that had ended the world, and it desired the Mindeater, the second lord of hunger that had been afflicted with a curse eerily similar to the one that broke Nihilus into the empty husk that he was.
For many months the sith lord explored the ruins in solitude, unfazed by the decayed sea that framed it. Only when all its secrets laid uncovered, when his endless mind had learned all that was to learn in the halls of lost knowledge he rose from below the sea. The former ruin had called for him and now he would answer. What was once dead and empty would live a new, the eternal home of the mind devouring evil that had clawed his metal hands into the dead world.
