Star Wars Roleplay: Chaos

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Dominion The Orphaned World [Planetary Expedition Open to all ] [ DIA Dominion of Kiev'ara]

High Commander of the Lilaste Order
Laphisto took in a slow, steady breath. For the first time in several cycles, he felt... still. Not calm, exactly but at peace in a way that hadn't been possible mere moments ago. The fire in his veins had vanished, and the agony gnawing at his bones had ceased. And yet, something remained.

A strange, invisible tether pulled at him not violently, but insistently. It felt like a harness wrapped tight around his heart or something deeper gently drawing him toward a nearby cluster of petrified Kiev'arians. He might have followed it immediately, had his senses not been interrupted by the sharp contrast of a bright orange suit moving into his periphery. Derron Daks Derron Daks .
"Derron Daks, Chief Executive, DDSI. Something has triggered a response within the planet," he said, not realizing that Laphisto himself was the reason for it. "It came as a flurry of energies, including a gravitic pulse. There is clearly some mechanism still active among these ruins. Perhaps a defense system. Though... I am unsure. We have sustained casualties, but nothing as serious as I'd expect from an attempt at repelling the gathered forces here."

The executive’s voice cut through the strange haze with clinical precision, his datapad streaming updates as he approached. A flurry of information followed: sensor readings, energetic disturbances, casualties Laphisto’s brow furrowed at the word. He had expected risk on this mission, yes. But not this soon. Not so sudden. The weight of those lost, though unknown to him personally, settled heavily on his shoulders.

Before he could fully respond, the man’s tone shifted. The threat of an unidentified fleet. Possible piracy. His commlink came alive at once, a sudden deluge of delayed transmissions flooding in, and instinctively, Laphisto tapped the interface on his vambrace. Among the chaos, one stood out a signal from @Brakkus, confirming the arrival of the Ando Mining Collective.

Laphisto’s gaze flicked back toward Derron and the fleet beyond, noting the swift and disciplined readiness of the DDSI forces. Their response was immediate. Efficient. That earned respect. It spoke of professionalism and trustworthiness, and it bolstered the executive’s reputation in Laphisto’s mind. He wasted no time. Fingers dancing across the vambrace’s display, Laphisto sent an encrypted transmission across all frequencies. His voice came across calm, steady, and clear even as the ancient world around him whispered forgotten memories into the dust.

Commander Xander, hold fire. The Ando Mining Collective is a late addition to our party. I’ve received confirmation from their command. Stand down and maintain current readiness though I thank you sincerely for your vigilance.” He glanced briefly at Derron, nodding once with quiet approval before his Eyes turned again toward the still-silent statues awaiting him in the ash.

With the near friendly-fire incident behind them, Laphisto let out a low, steady sigh, his breath briefly fogging inside the mask of his suit. His gaze drifted back toward one of the petrified Kiev'arian corpses frozen mid-motion, locked in the last act of a life cut short. The soft green glow in its chest pulsed faintly, steady and patient, like something beneath the surface still remembered how to breathe.

A part of him wanted to go to it. To stand among the fallen and try to feel whatever it was pulling at him since he stepped off the ramp. But the moment passed as a voice pulled him back to the present. Zara Saga Zara Saga . Her tone was unmistakable cool, playful, biting in just the right way. He didn't need to turn to know the smirk that came with it. "Believe it or not," he answered, his voice tinged with dry humor, "I've been seeing with the Force this whole time. Was no one going to tell me I was doing it wrong? I feel like that could have been mentioned in a Briefing"

He gave a short chuckle, shaking his head lightly as his arms folded across his chest. It was a small moment of levity, but on this dead world, it felt like a spark in the dark. Then his attention shifted to the second new arrival Diarch Reign Diarch Reign , finally here. "Speaking of fashionably late…" Laphisto said, glancing between them both. "Thank the Gods you're here. I was starting to worry Rellik might begin licking rocks. And apparently, I was going to be the one stuck making sure he didn't."

A thin sheet of ash curled along the ground around them, disturbed by their movements. It clung to their boots, floated lazily in the air, catching what little light the surface reflected. In the distance, twisted spires jutted from the earth like broken spears, silent witnesses to a forgotten war. The cold wasn't just in the air it was in the bones of the place. The silence around them wasn't empty, it was watching.

The sound caught his attention a body hitting the ground, just off the edge of the ramp.

Laphisto's ears twitched as he turned, spotting Zinayn Zinayn sprawled out in the grit. The Chiss was rarely clumsy. That alone was enough to pull Laphisto from his own thoughts. He stepped toward him, boots sinking slightly into the fine layer of dry, powdery sediment that coated the surface. It wasn't sand. It wasn't soil. It felt… too light. Too dead. He slowed as he reached the Chiss, extending a clawed hand toward him."Are you alright, my friend?" he asked, brow quirking up. "Don't tell me your first step onto this sacred world was face-first into the dirt."

Zinayn took the hand, lifting himself up to one knee. But something about the way he moved set off a quiet alarm in the back of Laphisto's mind. He wasn't just dazed. He was off. Zinayn was normally collected, efficient. Every step was measured. But now… there was a hesitation in his balance. A brief delay in his eyes refocusing. He brushed the ground like someone trying to remember how gravity worked, like his center had shifted and he was only just catching up. Laphisto studied him quietly. his face abscent of the usual glaired/ squint he alwasy bore etched onto his face. almost like for the first time since the Chiss - or anyone that had ever met him for that matter- had met him, he wasnt looking Glairing or like the sun was in his eyes

He didn't need the Force to sense it because there was no Force here. But Zinayn's disorientation didn't come from fatigue. It came from absence. He watched as the Chiss straightened, his movements regaining precision, but the moment lingered. Zinayn scanned the field ahead, taking in the dead their forms frozen in final moments, hands still gripping weapons, faces locked mid-scream. The soft glow in their chests reflected faintly off Zinayn's visor.He didn't say anything. and laphisto didn't press. He knew that look. The silence that came not from confusion, but from recognition when something deep beneath the surface had changed, and words hadn't caught up to it yet.

Laphisto's gaze shot toward Diarch Rellik Diarch Rellik the moment the Diarch spoke, pupils narrowing in the subtle glow of his own awakening. A small smile pulled across his face not forced, not weary genuine. But there was something distant in it, like the smile belonged to someone halfway between this moment and another entirely. "What do I see?" he echoed, voice low and thoughtful. "Everything. It's so... clear." There was a softness to his tone, a kind of reverence rarely heard from the High Commander. It wasn't the voice of a warrior or a leader, but of a man seeing color for the first time after a lifetime of shadows. After helping Zinayn to his feet, Laphisto turned his head slightly toward Rellik, offering a slow nod. His smile lingered, faint.

"I'm alright," he said. "At least... a lot better than I was inside that damned thing." He gestured back toward the shuttle with a flick of his clawed hand, but the motion was almost absent-minded. His focus had already shifted. The pulse returned. Faint at first, a green flicker beneath his scales. Then stronger pulsing in rhythm, steady, deliberate. It traced along his neck and down his arms, curling beneath the skin like living fire. The glow in his veins flared in perfect synchronization with the crystals embedded in the petrified Kiev'arians nearby. Each beat was mirrored. His body and the dead moved in lockstep, as though some shared circuit had reconnected.

It was no longer just a reaction. It was a conversation. And Laphisto was listening. His eyes drifted toward the group of corpses that had called to him from the moment he set foot on this cursed world. One in particular held his attention now taller than the others, shoulders broad, armor half shattered but still regal in shape. A warrior. A guardian. Maybe more. The Kiev'arian stood frozen in time, as though defying the moment of death itself. Dust clung to him like the weight of history. Laphisto began to walk.

"Commander Daks, was it?" he said aloud, still facing forward. "How far along is your team with establishing the FOB and locking down a stable uplink to orbit?" His voice was calm controlled but disconnected. He didn't turn to look. Didn't even blink. The question wasn't an inquiry it was protocol, rattled off like a forgotten reflex. His words moved ahead of him, but his mind was somewhere else entirely. Like a machine running an old command line while something deeper took root beneath the surface. Each step brought him closer to the towering figure.

The world around him felt heavier now not in pressure, but in presence. Like the air was thick with forgotten memory. The Force still didn't answer him, but something else did. Something that didn't speak in words. Something that remembered him. He stopped. Just a few feet away from the warrior's statue-still frame. Its face was locked in a half-snarl, eyes frozen mid-glare. The crystal embedded in its chest pulsed once. Then again. Laphisto's own veins responded. He stared up at the figure, searching its features searching for something he couldn't name. A flicker of recognition? A fragment of memory? Or perhaps just a reflection of himself.

Almost instinctively, Laphisto reached out, his fingers brushing gently across the ash-caked breastplate of the petrified Kiev'arian. The armor was worn, cracked, half-fused with the elements but his touch disturbed the dust, clearing it just enough to reveal something beneath. A symbol. Sharp and unmistakable, etched into the metal like a memory burned into stone. His breath caught. It was the same sigil he bore on his own chestplate—the crest of his bloodline. His family. This warrior hadn't just been a member of his species. He had been kin. His hand lingered. Reverent. Shaking slightly.

The moment his claws grazed the cracked surface again, he felt the brittle edge of something shift. A fragment of the breastplate gave way with a faint crack, and with it, the chest cavity fell open—stone and metal parting with a hollow creak that echoed louder than it should've in the dead stillness of the world. And there it was. Nestled in the hollow of the corpse's ribs: a green, pulsing jewel. Vibrant. Alive. Its glow throbbed in rhythm with Laphisto's own chest, like it was breathing alongside him. He froze.

He didn't understand what he was looking atnot fully. But he felt it. Not just the weight of the jewel, but the weight of presence. Of soul. This was no ornament. This was a Fire Tear The last reminants of a Kiev'arian. thier soul in phisical form. A conduit of essence. as he looked to the jewel he felt a mix of sorrow and awe before something, no someone spoke.

Not in words. Not in the Force. But in a voice that buried its teeth into the back of Laphisto's mind and snarled with urgency a voice that raked acrossed his very soul. and sent pin pricks racing acrossed his body "Take it." Laphisto tried to resist at first but then the voice cam e back stonger almost overwhelming "NOW" The voice shook and vibrated within his skull, with a wince, he obeyed. He didn't hesitate. almost instictually so as if something within his blood told him to do so. and so with Fingers trembling, he couldnt stop himself even if he wanted to at this point. His hand closed around the Fire Tear, the jewel warm against his palm warmer than it had any right to be in this dead, sunless place. The surface was smooth, almost soft, like holding glass filled with moving light.


It pulsed once beneath his grip.Then, all at once, the jewel responded. The glow intensified bright emerald fire bursting within the crystal's heart—then surged outward in a violent wave of light that shot up Laphisto's arm like a current of lightning. His body seized for a moment, a deep, shuddering breath catching in his throat as his muscles tensed involuntarily.

The veins beneath his scales, already glowing faintly since his arrival, now blazed with renewed intensity. That same vibrant green carved burning lines up his forearm, his neck, across his chest, and along the edges of his face. The pulse wasn't chaotic it was measured, deliberate, like the rhythm of a beating heart. A soft, high-pitched tone rang in his ears not a sound exactly, but a pressure that built in his skull, humming like a tuning fork against the base of his spine. It wasn't pain, but it was overwhelming. His body convulsed as the energy dug deeper, latching onto something inside him—into blood, into memory, into him. he felt the warmth of the Souls energy pool into his own Fire tear

Suddenly, the world around him shattered. He wasn't pulled backward he was thrown through time, like a soul caught in the undertow of memory. The present cracked and peeled away like burnt parchment, revealing something older beneath. His vision blurred, then snapped into painful clarity. He was still standingbut it wasn't the same world. The lifeless city was gone. Now, it burned with life and fire. The sky above churned with black smoke, flickering red with distant flames. The cold, silent graveyard had transformed into a battlefield mid-siege.

Kiev'arians stormed past him in all directions, roaring war cries as steel rang against steel. Swords clashed. Shields slammed. The air shook with the sound of thousands of voices crying out in one last, defiant stand. Laphisto spun around, breathing hard, his instincts flaring. Every movement around him screamed danger. His eyes darted through the chaos then locked onto a patch of ground that, just moments ago, had been empty.

To the others, there was still nothing there. But to Laphisto, the land crawled with enemies. A tide of Rakatan warriors surged over the horizon, massive war-beasts at their flanks. Energy weapons lit the air with deadly arcs. The ground trembled beneath their charge. One of them—a hulking brute clad in ancient armor broke from the line and lunged straight for him.

With a snarl, Laphisto reacted on instinct. His saber was already in hand before he realized he'd drawn it, the plasma blade igniting with a snap-hiss and casting a brilliant blue glow against teh surroundings the air seemed to react and crackle against his saber. like it was almost unstable. He struck. But there was no enemy.The blade passed cleanly through empty air, and yet he could feel the clash the resistance that wasn't there.

He stepped back, muscles tensed, eyes wide, swinging again. His blade carved through two nearby petrified Kiev'arian corpses, stone splitting like brittle glass under the force of his strike. The shattered remains collapsed to the ground with a heavy, echoing crack. Another step back—he collided with a third statue. It wobbled, toppled, and slammed into a fourth, the weight cascading until two more frozen bodies were crushed beneath the pile. each Warrior who fell crumbled to dust and chunks of stone, the only true reminants being the weapons they Wielded and the Jewls of thier souls

The vision broke. Snapped. And like a tidal wave receding, Laphisto was yanked back into the present. The burning sky was gone. The roar of battle silenced. He stood alone again in the ash-choked ruin, his chest heaving, breath sharp and ragged. Sweat clung to his brow. His blade still hummed in his grip, casting its glow across the wreckage he had accidentally caused. He blinked. Once. Twice. Confused. Disoriented.

"Wh… what..." he muttered, staggering slightly. His gaze shot to the others. "Where...?" He looked around, wild-eyed, blinking hard like someone waking from a dream they couldn't escape. "Are you all alright? Did you… see that?" But by the looks on their faces he already knew the answer. but apart of him needed clarification that They hadn't seen anything. or Reassurance that they had

OBJECTIVE II GM RESPONSE
Tags Derron Daks Derron Daks Saga Merrill Saga Merrill Brakkus Brakkus
Kiev'ara does not have an atmosphere. It does not have weather. It does not have wind. But it feels.

Kiev'ara had already stirred once. A single pulse. A breath after eons of silence. But this time… the planet opened its eyes.

The arrival of the Ando Mining Collective, their vast fleet trailing behind them like a mechanical storm, marked a turning point. Civilian mining barges. Heavily shielded transports. Diarchy warships escorting them in formation. The sudden appearance of so much mass, so many signals—all pressing into the void surrounding Kiev'ara was enough to awaken something older than memory.

The pulse came less like an explosion and more like a ripple a precise, deliberate wave that rolled up from the planet's interior and struck orbit like a planetary-scale heartbeat. It wasn't the same reflexive jolt that had first scattered beacons and thrown dropships off-course. This was sharper. More measured. A second breath… filled with awareness. and much less violent

For a fleeting moment, space twisted. Gravitational readings spiked and sensors flared red across multiple fleets. The world's pull seemed to double, holding everything in orbit just a little too tightly then loosening its grip just as quickly. And in that disorienting moment, something in the pattern of the energy revealed its nature. It wasn't just background noise. It had rhythm. A tempo.

Any scientist worth their training and any Force-sensitive who hadn't gone numb in the void might have felt it. The pulse mimicked something ancient and biological: a rise in adrenaline. A heart reacting to fear. Or rage. Or maybe… excitement. It wasn't just a dead world anymore. It was a mind, vast and unsure, reacting to the number of strangers now knocking at its door.

The ships pressing against its orbit. The machines preparing to pierce its skin. The memories waking beneath the ash. and perhaps most disturbingly of all, something shifted in the way the planet carried itself. Some navigators reported that their drift calculations had suddenly stabilized, as if the planet had anchored itself. Like it had decided where it wanted to be. Communication buoys lit with flickering electromagnetic signatures repeating bursts that almost resembled patterns.

And far beyond the visible hemisphere, where none of the fleets yet flew, a single navigational beacon returned strange telemetry. A dark object, unmoving, lurking behind Kiev'ara like a shadow dragged by the planet's wake. Its shape was too deliberate to be natural. No transponder. No motion. No heat.It had simply... been there.Watching.

Down on the surface, the silence had changed. It wasn't just still anymore—it was expectant. Every footstep kicked up dust that seemed to fall slower than it should. The ash-laden windless air made voices sound thinner. Like the world itself was listening to them speak. Kiev'ara had been dormant. Then it had awoken. And now, it was thinking. It knew it was being watched. And it had started watching back.



GM RESPONSE FOR Merion Oreno Merion Oreno

The Hollow Spire stands like a severed pillar reaching toward a sky that no longer watches. Time has worn away its elegance, but not its gravity. Rising from a plateau of cracked obsidian, the observatory is half-ruined, its upper reaches broken and slumped like a penitent giant. And yet, for all its damage, it feels... deliberate. As though its destruction was not collapse, but silence made physical.

Stone archways guard the entrance, carved in the ancient Kiev'arian style deep, sweeping runes etched into the weathered stone, marking celestial phases and long-lost planetary alignments. What once might have been a grand courtyard lies buried beneath dust and petrified rootwork. At the center of the entry hall, two statues flank the main threshold hooded Kiev'arian scholars carved from blackstone, their hands pressed together around empty sockets where once offerings may have been placed. Within, the air is still. The silence is not merely that of abandonment, but of vacuum—a pressureless, emotionless void that clings to the bones.

The interior is stone and crystalvaulted ceilings reinforced by riveted beams of Kov'dra metal and archways inlaid with emerald-hued Aetherium glass. Once, these crystals caught the light of distant stars and refracted them across the observatory's domed ceiling, tracking the passage of time with radiant splendor. Now, they lie dark. Dead. Or nearly so.

At the center of the Spire lies the Celestial Chamber, a circular observatory marked by concentric star maps carved into the floor. Cracks run through the inlays. Entire constellations have been obliterated. Above, the shattered oculus offers a view of deep space beyond Kiev'ara's surface but no light enters here. The stars do not shine on this world. And yet, something does.

Set into the floor, partially obscured by a collapsed pillar and a tangle of scorched ceremonial fabric, is a small, sealed reliquary a smooth black stone set in a bronze and crystal pedestal, about waist-height. It hums faintly not with sound, but with presence. There are no moving parts. No mechanical locks. But the nearer one gets, the more the silence deepens. The chamber feels heavier here. The closer one gets, the more the ancient star patterns on the walls seem to shimmer—not visibly, but in memory. Like a whisper on the edge of a thought.
 
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Communication buoys lit with flickering electromagnetic signatures repeating bursts that almost resembled patterns.

And far beyond the visible hemisphere, where none of the fleets yet flew, a single navigational beacon returned strange telemetry. A dark object, unmoving, lurking behind Kiev'ara like a shadow dragged by the planet's wake. Its shape was too deliberate to be natural. No transponder. No motion. No heat.It had simply... been there.Watching.

There was only one answer to such a deliberate mystery.

Saga took in the data, assessed shield status and cloak functionality and potential trajectories, and picked a course that would take the City of Nar Shaddaa screaming past the huge dark object within turbolaser range. Once he hit that speed, that range, he had no doubt that any serious sensors would pick up his drive efflux regardless of the cloaking device. The engines would be running that hot to make this work.

"What are you?" he said, and hit the gas. The long old space train leaped ahead. The nearest objects - debris, ships, nav buoys - shuffled themselves into his aft sensor screen rapidly. One sensor contact replaced them, that one dark shape, pretty close to dead ahead. Saga flicked the old display precisely to recalibrate it as leftover interference jittered through the cabin systems.The shape became clearer.

Safe for now within shields and cloak, but soon less so, Saga armed every one of the exploration ship's get-out-of-jail-free cards and got ready to dance with the mystery.
 
Too long under the human peace
Set into the floor, partially obscured by a collapsed pillar and a tangle of scorched ceremonial fabric, is a small, sealed reliquary a smooth black stone set in a bronze and crystal pedestal, about waist-height. It hums faintly not with sound, but with presence. There are no moving parts. No mechanical locks. But the nearer one gets, the more the silence deepens. The chamber feels heavier here. The closer one gets, the more the ancient star patterns on the walls seem to shimmer—not visibly, but in memory. Like a whisper on the edge of a thought.

After touching down, Merion had reluctantly stripped from his cultic robes and replaced them with a basic space suit of the kind the cult used for maintenance. Polishing the exterior of the viewing galleries, primarily; most cult observatories went shieldless, so micro-debris impacts piled up, scouring and streaking the transparisteel. He and the ill-fitting, pungent space suit went inside the ruin.

He moved with something like reverence through all this and tried to listen to his instincts as he'd been taught. But this place seemed to defy metacognition. He kept finding himself drawn into the experience of it, the uniqueness of its aesthetics and solitude and total silence, the shimmer of the stars.

That hum from that black stone was nearly sound, and the first thing he'd heard but his own breath and the creaking of his suit's joints. He approached, because what else was he going to do.

A good ten feet away, he paused and focused and thought about all the things the stone could be. He probed it through the Force as ably as he could, interrogated it.
 
High Commander of the Lilaste Order

GM RESPONSE FOR Saga Merrill Saga Merrill


As Saga's ship drew within visual range, the mystery resolved into something real and ancient.Floating in the shadowed arc behind Kiev'ara was a vessel of unmistakable origin, its massive silhouette framed against the starless void. The Rakatan warship was not shaped like anything living it resembled a monolith cleaved into symmetry, a design both alien and deeply utilitarian.

The ship's structure was comprised of three enormous slab-like arms extending forward like the tines of a trident. Each was thick, blocky, and deeply grooved with lines of engraved Rakatan script, the characters dulled by age and micro-collisions. Whatever language they once spoke, they now resembled scars—etched memories of a forgotten empire.

At the heart of the vessel, bridging the arms, was a curved central hull more rounded, but still severe. It formed a sort of command dome, smooth like polished stone, with a recessed viewport or sensor cluster peering outward like the gaze of a slumbering predator. The angles of the dome caught the starlight in a way that made it appear slick with oil, even though no light touched it.

Flanking the stern, vertical fin-like protrusions jutted upward—likely once serving as communication towers or energy arrays, now half-shattered and riddled with micro-punctures. The vessel showed no signs of recent movement. It was silent, half-buried in static, but not lifeless. Its core remained whole.

Despite the damage—cracks in its hull, a long scorch mark down one arm, and debris peppering its surface the ship remained perfectly poised. It did not tumble. It did not drift. It was as if some unseen anchor kept it frozen in place, watching the planet it once likely helped conquer. .As Saga adjusted his heading to drift across its bow, his sensors picked up the sharp edge of a docking cavity wide enough for an old Rakatan shuttle, still open and flush with residual energy readings.





GM RESPONSE FOR Merion Oreno Merion Oreno

As Merion reached out with the Force, they found nothing waiting for them. Not resistance. Not blockage. Just absence.
The Force did not operate here. Not above, not below, not in the smallest grain of dust or the deepest carved glyph. The entire planet was a void.
A planet-wide nexus of silence, where the Force had been stripped clean ripped away so completely that even the act of reaching out felt like screaming into an airless vacuum. It wasn't just that the Force was gone. It was that its absence was palpable, almost physical. A spiritual deafness. A drowning, not in sound, but in the hollow memory of what used to be.

And in that moment, Merion stood alone.Truly alone. Yet, even without the Force, there were still things to see. To observe. To understand. the so-called stone. upon Closer inspection revealed that it wasn't just a pedestal. The texture, the construction, the shape it wasn't naturally formed. It was crafted. Not a monument, but a box.

Two handles were affixed to either side, partially recessed into its base, shaped for deliberate use. Not ceremonial. Practical. A lid sat flush with the top, nearly invisible until seen at the right angle, edged by a faint seam that curved around the corners like a well-fitted seal. It didn't radiate power It didn't call through the Force. But there was something about it something still, heavy, and expectant. As if it had been waiting. For what? Or for who?
That answer remained hidden. But the box was there. And it was meant to be opened.
 
As Saga adjusted his heading to drift across its bow, his sensors picked up the sharp edge of a docking cavity wide enough for an old Rakatan shuttle, still open and flush with residual energy readings.
As the nature of the shape had become clear, Saga had eased off the gas and adjusted course repeatedly to ensure his position couldn't be extrapolated from drive efflux. Now he slid the City of Nar Shaddaa alongside the Rakata derelict and began what scans he could run without compromising the cloak. Despite the excitement of the situation, the scale of it, he took his time. Even scans of a Rakata vessel had value.

Once he'd learned what he could learn, he strapped on one of his maker's old toolbelts and a cruel, secondhand Haran'hett disruptor pistol. A repulsor/maneuver pack rounded out his accoutrements.

He was alone on the cloaked space train, most of which was hard vacuum. Heading into that shuttle bay, a distance of less than five hundred meters, was as simple as jumping out the door.
 
Too long under the human peace
But the box was there. And it was meant to be opened.

The Force told him nothing. That made sense. He'd trained his instincts on Eshan in relative comfort, or aboard cult observatories, not in circumstances as strange as this. Absence of evidence, he told himself, not evidence of absence. Better believe there's something dangerous inside.

He tramped all the way back to the shuttle and secured a hover pad, last used for moving a warped and sacred chunk of Death Star. Then back to the box again, aiming to use those recessed handles to move it onto the pad.

Over-caution? Maybe. But he'd grown up around deadly Force practitioners, and the gap between what his grandmothers and aunts could do and his own skills gave him a lot of pause. A thing this grand worked at their scale, not his.
 
High Commander of the Lilaste Order
GM RESPONSE FOR Saga Merrill Saga Merrill

As Saga slipped into the open docking channel, the City of Nar Shaddaa hovering silently behind him under cloak, the surrounding environment slowly responded. The interior lighting flickered to life in staggered sequences—overhead panels casting sickly amber hues across the bay as ancient subsystems sputtered online for the first time in millennia. Against all logic, artificial gravity was still functioning, though unevenly—creating a subtle tilt beneath his boots that felt more like standing on the shoulder of a corpse than solid ground.

Then came the bodies. Dozens of mummified Rakata, frozen mid-motion, their desiccated forms clinging to the edges of the shuttle bay like remnants of a battle long past. Most wore simple officer uniforms leathery, degraded, and brittle from exposure to vacuum. But the cause of death was not age or depressurization. It was violence.

Arrowsancient, crude by comparisonjutted from twisted torsos, some piercing clean through their victims and anchoring them directly into the hull plating. Others bore slash wounds, the type inflicted by blades honed for precision, not brute force. Whoever had done this hadn't just fought—they had executed. Several bodies were still upright, hanging by shafted weapons that had skewered them into the walls like pinned insects. Others were crumpled in twisted poses, surrounded by long-dried stains and fragments of shattered biotech armor.

A quick scan of the structural readouts revealed the source of the breach: a large, round object possibly some type of solid Projectile had pierced through the outer hull in this section, creating the decompression event that likely killed the remaining crew. The surrounding metal had buckled inward, and fine shards of alloy still floated faintly near the rupture, caught in pockets of inertial flux. More curious still, the projectile wasn't visible on this side. Whatever struck the warship had either passed clean through… or was still buried deeper within. the door beyond the Shuttle bay for the moment was closed

GM RESPONSE FOR Merion Oreno Merion Oreno
The moment Merion stepped onto the shuttle's loading ramp, it hit him. The Force returned not like a whisper or a slow reconnection, but all at once. Like someone had pulled a blindfold from his soul. It flooded through him with the same familiarity it always had: steady, alive, comforting. As if it had never left.

And then he stepped back onto the ground.Gone. Violently gone. just like last time The severance was immediate and jarring, like having oxygen ripped from his lungs. No transition. No delay. Just silence. Emptiness. A black vacuum where the Force should have been. The shift was so profound it felt deliberate, like the planet itself was pushing him away, or perhaps choosing what to allow. But the stone box that was different.

As Merion turned his focus back to the strange artifact, he found it resisted movement in a way that had nothing to do with weight. The base of the box was fused directly to the pedestal, which itself was melded into the stone floor, as though the three components had once been separate—but time, or something else, had bound them into one.

The box didn't hum like a machine, and it didn't buzz like a power cell. It vibrated, faintly, irregularly, almost eagerly as though it sensed Merion's proximity and was… reacting. The handles still moved freely, and the lid's seam remained visible untouched by time. But whatever was within seemed to vibrate hte closer merion got perhaps it wanted to be opened, Something about the vibration wasn't just physical. The closer Merion leaned in, the more it resonated in his chest, not as sound but as a feeling. A presence. Not sentient exactly, but aware.
 
Too long under the human peace
but time, or something else, had bound them into one.
The more the thing seemed to want a certain action from him, the more he thought of home and expectations and orders and duties and resentment.

Instead, he took out his simple lightsaber. The orange blade flickered soundlessly to life in the vacuum. He stuck it out horizontally, about three inches below the box, and began ingloriously sawing the top three inches off the pedestal. The goal was to stick the box and stone on the hover pad.

There was no dignity to this. There wasn't even much prudence. Real carefulness would have meant leaving and coming back with someone who knew their business, a real master like one of his grandmothers or one of the Diarchs. He figured he was taking enough precautions to keep the prize his own.
 
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Objective I, Forward Echo...

___________________________________________________________________________________________________


Derron opened his mouth to correct Laphisto about him being a Commander, but closed it again, judging the distinction unimportant. An interruption on such an inconsequential point would just introduce an inefficiency into the dialogue. "That's accurate enough," he affirmed.

The news that Laphisto used the Force to see his surroundings was something of a revelation. Derron would have paid good money to put the man into an examination chamber and unravel the genetics or neurological structures that made such a thing possible. The Force was something still largely opaque to the scientists at DDSI, who worked mostly with 'ordinary' physics.

But that analysis surely wouldn't happen, so it didn't bear thinking about.

The arriving fleet of miners weren't hostile according to Laphisto, which was good news. Derron tapped an affirmation into his wrist-mounted datapad, which would confirm Laphisto's instructions to stand down from alert status.

When asked about the basecamp and connection to orbit, he was finally able to reply with something useful. "The basecamp will be built out further over the next hour, but the presence of the rover and carryall already give us a complete communication relay to orbit, along with extensive sensor and analysis apparatus on the ground. The rover in particular is something of a mobile headquarters for ground research teams."

The capabilities of DDSI researchers and explorers would be enhanced by inflatable vac-tents and associated ground laboratory apparatus, of course. Yet already, the science was underway. Those personnel not establishing the camp were at work taking readings on the immediate environment, and preparing to excavate the many corpses which littered the nearby terrain.


Laphisto didn't seem to be listening anymore, however. He approached one of the corpses and bent to pick up some sort of crystal.

"I'd recommend any samples be taken with collection tongs, placed into protected containers, and studied in one of the-" his advice was terminated when Laphisto drew and ignited a lightsaber.

Derron stepped back. It wasn't a move of fear- he rarely felt anything so strongly as that- but of prudence. A wayward swing with such a weapon could be quite fatal, and he was unsure why Laphisto had drawn the blade. He glanced around, then consulted his HUD. There were energy fluctuations, but no sign of danger. Certainly nothing that could be fought with a saber.

"Are you all alright? Did you… see that?"

"I saw you draw a weapon," Derron responded, "but I saw no reason for it." His gaze turned to look at the object Laphisto had retrieved from the vicinity of the corpse. "Your state of alarm and confusion seems to have coincided with the retrieval of that artifact."

He considered the fact that Laphisto was apparently gifted with Force abilities. "There are extensive records of crystalline lattices being used in the construction of Force relics. Is it possible that object is such a device? Perhaps you are susceptible to an emanation it produces, on account of your abilities."

While Derron had no Force sensitivity- and his company had no investigative branch for such things- history was replete with records of all sorts of Force baubles with remarkable abilities.

As he considered that, the planet seemed to shift.

It seemed to... but of course, the planet didn't really shift. It was Derron that shifted. His perception shifted. His weight shifted. The motes of dust or ash in the thin atmosphere of the world shifted. The planet itself did not move, yet it moved everything at least a little. In orbit, perhaps moreso.


A call came in from the Umbra, "Commander Xander here. Recovery and repair efforts are underway, with data collection proceeding meanwhile. We are receiving a regular pulsing energy signature from the planet on a multitude of wavelengths and particle spectra, including gravitic. The regular pulses suggest a cyclical machine is online beneath the crust. No damage at this time.

There is also a somewhat amorphous null-energy object near the planet. We are having characteristic difficulty in getting readings from a null energy object. It is mostly visible in its absence."


Confusion always preceded revelation. Derron resigned himself that confusion would probably endure a while longer.

"Take all precautions and keep me informed," Derron said, cutting the transmission. Xander would know to call again when he had more information.

He returned his attention to Laphisto, "I'd like to dispatch teams to collect these crystal samples from this field of bodies, place them in stasis, and eventually transport them to one of the research frigates for analysis. None of my people are force sensitive, and our use of cybernetics most likely makes us even less susceptible to force effects than an average non-sensitive individual."



Derron Daks Derron Daks Saga Merrill Saga Merrill Brakkus Brakkus Diarch Rellik Diarch Rellik Diarch Reign Diarch Reign Zara Saga Zara Saga Laphisto Laphisto
 

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Objective IA – Forward Echo: Establishing the Ice Line

Rellik could feel the echo of the world in his bones. It hummed in tandem with the glow of Laphistos Veins. He stood still, half-kneeling in what he believed to be ashes. Watching his friend move towards the statue of the Kie'varan warrior. His fingers twitched at his sides wishing his blade was not on the interior of his suit. The Force was absent, yet something older had taken its place. A presence that didn't answer to the whills in the same way he did.

Rellik's golden eyes tracked Laphisto as he moved, wordless and reverent, like a man halfway between a trance and revelation. Zinayn was up now too, quiet, watching, shaken but recovering. But Rellik... he was reading the script of this moment—unfolding like prophecy written in dust.


Laphisto stopped at the fallen warrior.


A preserved Kiev'arian. Larger than the others. Regal in bearing. A shattered statue with the posture of a king. Rellik's breath hitched slightly as he watched his friend reach forward—no hesitation, no debate—and touch the warrior's chestplate. He thought he should have stopped him but he did not.

Something surged through him. The green light burst from its chest and to Laphisto. It pulsed like a second sun, and in that instant, Rellik understood.

it was an inheritance.

The Diarch's gaze sharpened, watching the glowing veins crawl up Laphisto's throat, into his jaw, across his skull like green fire licking through cracks in ancient stone. It was the same hue, the same rhythm as the Fire Tear.

It reminded the Diarch of the many times he has felt his fathers presence since his disappearance. It yearned, wanted and felt right for them to be together. As if it was destiny un-folding in real time.

Rellik stood as Laphisto staggered, eyes wide and distant, and drew his blade in a blur of instinct. He didn't hesitate. He attacked. The blade carved through empty air—but not harmlessly. Two of the preserved Kiev'arians shattered at the edge of his swing.

He could reach for Laphisto's mind, calm the storm with will or Force or word. But no—the Force was absent. And more than that, this wasn't madness. It was being dragged up from the marrow by the weight of one man's bloodline.

"That warrior in stone, it was his kin. That statue didn't just call to him - it recognized him." He thought to himself.

The same way his fathers spirit did at random intervals. The Diarch was unsure if this was a blessing or a curse and all he could do was watch for now. When Laphisto finally stilled, breath ragged, saber humming faintly at his side, Rellik didn't speak immediately. He glanced at Zinayn, gauging how he felt about this ordeal.

Moving quickly Rellik grabbed one of the glowing stones off of the ground. The second he did Rellik felt his connection to the force return. He attempted to feel into the air around him and gauge the flow of the force yet he could still not feel it. Nor when he tried to give the stone a small shock of lightning to test its capabilities did anything happen. It was a conduit of the force, yet not one the Diarch could access. For all intents and purposes - it was like the blanket of a child. Offering no real protection except the comfort from the emptiness he had felt before.

He put the stone in his pocket before speaking and approaching his friend.

"Easy," Rellik said softly, stepping beside Laphisto without touching him. "You're back. It's alright."


He watched Laphisto's wild-eyed gaze dart toward him.

"Did you see that?"


Rellik paused. Just for a heartbeat.


"No," he said truthfully. "But I think I understand it."


His eyes drifted to the broken body of the Kiev'arian warrior that he first went up to and touched.


"You awakened something. That statue didn't bond to you by chance. None of the others called to you the same way. Did you notice anything about its armor, crests, or the stone that you remembered?"

They're overlapping he thought. Rellik stepped closer, his golden eyes flickered with rare intensity as he worried about the life of his friend.

Tags: Laphisto Laphisto Zinayn Zinayn Zara Saga Zara Saga Diarch Reign Diarch Reign Derron Daks Derron Daks

 
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Zara's eyes were sharp, always, but now they struggled to make sense of what they were seeing. The land ahead, felt like a place halfway between life and death, stitched together by silence and ash. The others were just shapes at first, their outlines muted by the icy fog. But then, as she drew closer, something… shifted.

Laphisto stood in the middle of it all, veins glowing like threads of molten jade beneath his skin, his body too still, too taut. Zara slowed, boots crunching against the frost-crusted earth. Her breath caught in her throat. Something was happening and whatever it was, it had reached past the surface of him and taken root in his core.

Her spine prickled. This wasn't some Force ritual, or Force vision, or Force anything. The Force was gone. And yet here it was, something, crawling across Laphisto's face like a memory too ancient to name. She watched him jerk, watched him attack the air like he was trapped inside something none of them could see. When the statues shattered under his swing, she flinched, genuine fear flickering behind her eyes.

She hated not knowing. Not understanding. Zara liked having control - over herself, over her surroundings, over people, if she could manage i - and this place, this moment, tore that away from her. It left her feeling small and exposed, her usual weapons: wit, charm, strategy, useless against the yawning mystery in front of her.

As Laphisto swayed, breathing like he'd just run a hundred miles through fire, Zara took a cautious step closer. Her arms were wrapped tightly across her stomach now, not folded in defiance like before, but in a self-protective way, like if she could just hold herself together, she wouldn't fall apart with everything else.

She glanced at the broken remnants of the statue, then at Rellik and Zinayn. None of them were speaking. No one had answers.

Her voice came quiet, laced with uncharacteristic hesitation.

"What… just happened?"

She didn't expect a real answer. But she needed someone to say something, before the silence ate her too.

 


Kiev'ara

A commotion had begun to stir among the Ando Mining Collective staff assigned to scan and analyze Kiev'ara. Before any formal report could be made, the answer came violently: an immense gravitational surge erupted from the planet below, seizing every ship in the fleet with terrifying force.

Brakkus was slammed back into his seat as the pull intensified. Across the fleet, hulls groaned in protest, their alloy frames straining under the tug-of-war between the surge and the ship thrusters. The screech of metal echoed through the decks. Every siren onboard blared at once.

Danger. Immediate. Unavoidable.

Then—
Silence.

The pull vanished. Instruments steadied. Normal gravity resumed.

A collective breath of relief echoed throughout the fleet, almost loud enough to be felt through the hull. Kiev'ara hadn't claimed them. Not yet.

A shaken voice cut through the quiet.

"M-Mister Ka'bo, as you're aware, we just experienced a massive gravitational flux. We can't identify a source—no indication of interdiction fields or tractor beams from the Diarchy or Lilaste fleets. As far as we can tell… this came from the planet itself."

Brakkus said nothing at first, eyes narrowed at the fluctuating readouts on his console. Laphisto had promised potential. He had also warned of dangers. That warning was clearly not empty.

Another officer reported in.

"Update on the landing craft—every vessel has touched down except Number 34. The surge seems to have knocked out one of its thrusters. It's holding in low orbit. No casualties. Recovery team en route. Ground operation efficiency now at 89%."

Brakkus stood once more, his furred hand activating a broad-comm to all deployed field units.

"All ground teams, begin full-spectrum geophysical imaging immediately. Prioritize seismic tomography—if this planet has more surprises in store, I want to see them coming. Start drilling for core samples. Depth: ten meters minimum. Send all data directly to my command ship."

It was going to be a long day. Until a proper landing site could be secured and equipment deployed en masse, much of the work would need to be done manually. Brakkus knew this. So did his workers. Fortunately, they were some of the most seasoned in the galaxy at handling hostile terrain.

The expeditionary teams began disembarking from their craft. Clad in bulky, insulated exo-suits, the Aqualish workers were nearly indistinguishable beneath layers of armor and life support gear. Grav-boots clamped tightly to the surface beneath them with each step—without them, the strange zero-G pockets dotting Kiev'ara's surface could launch them into orbit. Or worse.

Despite the anomalies, the work began in earnest. Scanners pulsed. Soil was tested. Rock cores were extracted. And the first streams of precious data were beamed back to the command vessel.

The wheels of industry had begun to turn.

What secrets Kiev'ara held, no one could say for certain. But one question hung heavily in Brakkus' mind:
Would science alone be enough to uncover the mystery beneath their boots?





 
Others were crumpled in twisted poses, surrounded by long-dried stains and fragments of shattered biotech armor.

Whatever struck the warship had either passed clean through… or was still buried deeper within. the door beyond the Shuttle bay for the moment was closed

Saga took his time - an optimal number of minutes - scanning and hurling samples out toward where he knew his cloaked ship to be. He tucked smaller samples into his toolbelt. He could snag the larger ones with an EV pack or tractor beam.

While monetary value was not highest in his priority ranking systems, small pieces of vacuum-preserved Rakata tissue and biotech - no matter how ancient - were priceless to the right buyer. Operating capital was operating capital, and he'd spent most of Baobab's reserves on steeply discounted, top-of-the-line Starchaser exploration ships. The right sale could set him up to pursue more serious and interesting priorities for a higher fraction of his time.

Once that opportunistic biomass sampling and scanning wrapped up, he leveled the Haran'hett slow-disintegration disruptor at the sealed door and fired three times in a vertical line. Slowly, a door-sized oblong portion disintegrated, revealing what lay beyond.
 
Zinayn, now on his feet, breathed deeply a few times before answering Laphisto Laphisto . "Yes...I will be fine. Thank you," he said, nodding towards the High Commander. He blinked a few times and shook his head as if that would magically help everything return back to normal. He resorted back to swatting imaginary dust off of his thermal suit as if to reassure everyone that he was actually fine, and that he'd taken an unfortunate trip on the landing ramp.

His cover-up antics stopped abruptly when he saw a petrified Kiev'arian warrior, still standing upright amidst the other corpses. As if he had accepted his death, but refused to fall before the enemy. Zinayn watched warily as Laphisto caught sight of the statuesque figure and approached it. The dragon's claw brushed aside some dust on the figure's chest, and a gleaming jewel was revealed underneath. The Chiss noticed his jaw had parted slightly, but he didn't bother to close it. He was too captivated by the gleam (and how Laphisto reacted to it). Laphisto's veins pulsed with the same hue, and seemed to do so more desperately than they did while they were on the transport.

And then he grabbed it. Everything stood still for what seemed like minutes. Suddenly the crystal erupted with power coursing through Laphisto. Zinayn wanted to move to help his friend, maybe even to take out the crimson elixir that Diarch Rellik Diarch Rellik had given him. But he remained rooted to the spot, watching.

And then the blue blade ignited and slashed through empty air. Zinayn took a step back, even though he was a safe distance from the sudden outlash. A few swings and destroyed corpses later, Laphisto seemed to calm down, although he was clearly disoriented like the Chiss had been as soon as he stepped foot on the surface. When Laphisto asked his questions, Zinayn merely shook his head, at a loss for words. In his head, though, he was already thinking of explanations.

Perhaps Laphisto could be seeing the Force ghosts or spirits of his dead kin, or receiving visions from them. No, that was a silly idea, he knew. For there to be Force ghosts, the Force had to be here. And it wasn't. Unless...

Zinayn stepped forward, approaching one of the shattered forms that Laphisto had broken. A jewel similar to the one in the commander's claw was laying atop the layers of soot and ash, unblemished. After looking at it for a moment and weighing the consequences, he grabbed it.

Zara Saga Zara Saga Diarch Reign Diarch Reign
 
High Commander of the Lilaste Order
Laphisto glanced around slowly, the silence settling again around him like a thick, watching fog. Without warning, his lightsaber began to sputter. Sparks leapt from the emitter in erratic bursts, plasma arcing violently before the blade collapsed in on itself with a strained, mechanical whine—like gears grinding against stone. He frowned, thumbing the emitter again out of habit, but the weapon gave no response. Whatever had just happened had overloaded the circuitry. He was without his saber. With a quiet exhale, Laphisto turned toward Derron Daks Derron Daks , one brow raised, expression unreadable.

"I don't want these bodies desecrated, Commander," he said, his voice low but steady. "They died with swords in their hands, defending their home from… something. Whatever it was, it was enough to end us."His gaze drifted toward the shattered remains at his feet, his expression tightening. "I understand the need to study. To learn. If you must examine them, I only ask you do it with respect. These are my people. Whatever knowledge you uncover, treat them as more than relics."He crouched briefly beside one of the fallen, brushing a hand lightly over a fractured chestplate, then looked back to Derron.

"The crystals," he continued, quieter now, "we called them Fire Tears. My people believed they were the final embodiment of our souls. When a Kiev'arian died, the body would fade, and in its place, the Fire Tear remained. It was… sacred. We gave them to the gods, so the soul could be reborn." He hesitated, jaw tightening. "But every Kiev'arian I've seen die in this age left no Tear. The body stayed whole. and we were not about to rip open a dead body to find thier tear." His eyes narrowed faintly, a sliver of something old and haunted curling into his voice."My father used to say… it was because we were no longer in the embrace of our gods."

Laphisto's gaze drifted again toward the petrified warriors, but his focus was fractured. Something deeper itched beneath his skin like a second heartbeat trying to break free. He turned toward Derron once more, voice steady but thoughtful. "If you must take samples…" he began, then hesitated. His eyes settled on the shattered remains of one statue, hollowed out and crumbling to dust. "Then I ask you use the ones that have already decayed. The ones that have… turned to stone. Let them keep what Honor they have left."

His breath hitched mid-sentence.He had been glancing toward another corpse, one that wore a symbol on its breastplate an emblem he recognized. It matched the sigil etched along the spine of his own force-forged blade. His stare lingered, uncertain, until a sharp, sudden pain lanced behind his temple. "Good," the voice hissed. drawing itself out like nails against stone. It wasn't spoken aloud. It came from nowhere. From everywhere. A sensation like claws scraping the inner walls of his skull. He staggered slightly, one hand snapping up to press against the side of his head, as if he could physically shake the sound loose. The word had been approving. Not congratulatory commanding. Like an assessment had been passed.

He let out a low growl beneath his breath. When he looked up again, his eyes locked immediately onto Diarch Rellik Diarch Rellik just in time to see the Diarch's hand closing around one of the Fire Tears. A sharp jolt rippled through Laphisto, subtle but unmistakable. A string no, a tether spun itself into being between them, a thread of awareness that hadn't existed before. Not control. Not telepathy. Connection. And then it happened again. His gaze snapped toward Zinayn Zinayn . The Chiss had done the same. Another line extended outward, and for the briefest moment, Laphisto saw them not as allies but as points on a constellation. Their actions, deliberate or not, had linked them all to something far older than memory.

A second voice stirred. Not the first one. Not the one with teeth and iron. This one was different softer, gentler. A whisper made of warmth and patience."Protected." The word washed over him like sunlight through ice. His eyes drifted next to Zara, then to Reign then back to the fallen again. Something within him urged him forward, beckoning him to reach once more for another Tear. His hand moved, instinct driving it, fingers outstretched until the voice from before returned.

This time it didn't whisper."NO." The word cracked across his thoughts like a whip. Laphisto flinched. A snarl curled at the corner of his lip as he wrenched his hand back, claws trembling in the air. His ears twitched, his body reacting as though to a sharp reprimand, his stance shifting slightly as he steadied himself."Let them." The order reverberated through his core not angered, but final.

Laphisto exhaled sharply, grounding himself with a slow blink. The echo of that last command Let them still lingered behind his eyes like afterimages from a bright flash. He didn't understand it. Not fully. But he felt the weight of it. As if the planet or, something deeper had passed judgment and offered reluctant permission.

His claws flexed once before retreating to fold across his chest, his posture tightening in a bid to reclaim control. His shoulders rose with a breath, then fell an exhale thick with tension and dust. And just like that, his expression shifted. He looked toward Rellik. Then Zinayn. His eyes narrowed, not in suspicion but in something closer to wry acceptance like watching children sneak bites from a feast that wasn't yet blessed. A breath left him as half a chuckle, dry and quiet.

"Well," he muttered, his voice still rough from strain, "since Rellik and Zinayn already robbed a Tear from my… accident, it seems only fair the rest of you get one too." He rolled his eyes slightly, though the movement was gentle, almost affectionate. "Help yourselves. If nothing else, I'm sure you'll find the same clarity of mind they did though don't ask me to explain it. I doubt I could if I tried."

Laphisto's gaze danced toward Zara Saga Zara Saga then Diarch Reign Diarch Reign then over the field of broken warriors. His voice remained calm, even casual, but beneath it was a subtle current. An unspoken warning. "These aren't trinkets. Not charms or weapons. They're pieces of lives… souls, maybe. Don't take more than you're willing to carry." He turned slightly, gaze drifting back toward the ruined statue he'd desecrated not by intent, but by instinct. Something flickered behind his eyes. Regret, perhaps. Or guilt. But he didn't say it. Instead, he gave the others a faint, lopsided smirk faintly grim, but real all the same."Just try not to shatter any more of them. I'd rather not be haunted twice in the same day."

GM RESPONSE FOR Brakkus Brakkus
Beneath the slate skies and dead silence of Kiev'ara, the first drills broke earth.They did not scream or whine. Their sound was swallowed before it could echo, as if the planet itself refused to let their voices carry. As the workers of the Ando Mining Collective moved with practiced precision boots magnetized, suits insulated, respirators humming low in the back of their throats. In the voidlike hush, even those hums felt intrusive. Every vibration that sank into the crust felt like a trespass. The pulse had passed. But its memory lingered.

Scans came in fractured. Instruments jittered. The terrain resisted definition, shifting slightly with each layer peeled away. The ground was cold, but not inert. Its density was irregular, like memory sedimented into stone. Then came the anomaly. Three meters down, a core-sample rig snagged. Not on bedrock not on anything natural. What emerged was dark. Too dark. A faint metallic sheen caught against the scanlight like oil on obsidian. They cleared the surrounding layer by hand.

The ore was unlike anything in the collective's records. The sample came up dense, layered with dark green filaments like veins beneath skin. Cold to the touch so cold it leeched through gloves. But it didn't frost. It shimmered. Like something that had no right being buried had been waiting to be found. The surface was smooth. Not polished, not worn impossibly smooth. Dust refused to stick. Fragments of soil slid off as if repelled. And when one of the workers struck it lightly with a sensor probe, a faint hum rippled up their arm not through sound, but through bone.

That was the designation that would be assigned later by analysts. For now, the miners knew only what they felt: dread. Reverence. The sense that this metal wasn't meant for them. That it had once belonged to a people who shaped it with purpose, forged it in war, and died with it in hand. There were stories buried in that ore. Wars buried in that ore.

And still, the Collective gathered it. Samples were sealed. Markers placed. More drills repositioned. Deeper cuts were coming. Deeper wounds. But no one questioned the directive. Not yet. Overhead, the ships still floated in their anchored silence. And below the crust far below the pulse slowed again. But it hadn't stopped. It was listening. And now, something had touched its bones.


GM RESPONSE FOR Saga Merrill Saga Merrill

As the disruptor rifle finally breached the corroded Rakatan bulkhead, the door gave way with a groan of ancient metal and a slow exhale of pressurized dust. The room beyond was a tomb silent, still, but untouched by time in a way that defied the entropy of the void.Inside, the chamber told its story without words.

Desiccated Rakatan bodies lay slumped across the floor, many where they'd fallen, some fused to terminals or impaled against walls by debris or primitive weaponry. One body, hunched over a half-shattered console, still bore the carbon scoring of a plasma impact, its arm outstretched toward a long-dead screen.But the true focus of the room the reason the air felt heavier here stood at the chamber's center.

Five figures frozen in the moment of battle. Petrified mid-combat, their bodies turned to stone in an instant of violent stillness. Each was distinct in armor, stature, and bearing no duplicates among them but all shared that unmistakable silhouette: tall, regal, dragon-blooded, their features marked by sharp lines and ancient pride. The same species as the one who had called the science teams to Kiev'ara. Laphisto's kin.

Four of them wielded longblades, locked in forward lunges, defensive postures, or arcing swings, weapons raised in a final, unanswered strike. The fifth stood slightly apart, body half-twisted, a great bow drawn to full tension. The arrow nocked upon it shimmered faintly—not from the string's strain, but from the crystal at its tip: a shard of Crystallized Aetherium. The arrowhead pulsed with an Nebula-like shimmer, waves of translucent color drifting across its surface in slow, unnatural rhythms. And then came the glow. Not from the Rakata. Not from the machines.But from the Kiev'arians themselves.

Deep within their petrified chests, something beat. A pulse of light subtle, synchronized. Red. White. Green. Blue. One color in each, and one in the bowman. The lights glowed in perfect harmony: soft at first, then bright, then soft again. A heartbeat shared across stone bodies long dead. No power radiated from the glow. No threat lingered. But the sense of presence was undeniable. Five warriors, locked in the moment of their last stand. Five hearts that still remembered how to beat. Not alive. Not ghosts. But something in between.


GM RESPONSE FOR Merion Oreno Merion Oreno

The gold that adorned the pedestal was decorative at best ornate, ceremonial, and never meant to endure force. It hissed and softened beneath the slow, deliberate cut of the lightsaber, the once-proud legs melting away with little resistance. In a matter of moments, the upper portion—the box and the fused platform beneath it came free, settling with a dull metallic clink onto the waiting hovercart. Nothing stirred from within the container. No sound. No motion. No immediate consequence.

But as the hoverpad adjusted its balance and the box tilted ever so slightly just enough to disturb the flawless seala faint glow bled from the narrow seam. Soft and steady, the light was not bright but alive, like the breath of something ancient and patient. It shimmered for a moment in the vacuum like vapor, then faded back inside. The artifact didn't move, but it pulsed with a quiet urgency now. Not threatening. Not volatile. But aware. As though it had been waiting beneath the dust and silence for far too long and now, at last, it was reacting. And it wasn't the only thing.

Resting on a nearby table long forgotten, half-buried under drifts of ash and debris a helmet lay dormant. Forged in a style wholly foreign to Modern design, it bore thin, crystalline filigree across its crown. As the shimmer from the box spilled across the room, those veins of crystal came alive, glowing faintly in mirrored rhythm. The same color. The same pulse. Dim. Bright. Dim again. Whatever was inside the box, it had reached out. And something else had heard it.
 
But the sense of presence was undeniable. Five warriors, locked in the moment of their last stand. Five hearts that still remembered how to beat. Not alive. Not ghosts. But something in between.

Saga assessed a 63% likelihood, +/- 3%, that some technological or psionic remnant of these individuals (or their cause of death) persisted in their physical remains, and decided not to smash the hand apart to get the bow. He got good scans of the arrow and, after consideration, snipped the glowing crystal arrowhead off for further analysis and possible sale. That done, he decided to ignore all the remains.

He went instead to the broken console. The screen was useless, but he crouched and figured out how to unlatch one of the skewed panels at the base of the console. Rakata technology required psionic elements, if he remembered correctly — 'the Force,' it was said — and he had a specific Tsil crystal module installed, a 'holocracker' that allowed a droid to trick a holocron into thinking it was a Force-sensitive organic. He used that module now while attempting to bypass the broken screen, feed in a little power, and pipe some level of data from the console to his datapad. He had no illusions about what it would take to get Rakata systems data intelligible, but this ship was an enormously significant prize.

He wondered what it would require to take it in tow, and where he could take it if he managed it.
 
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Too long under the human peace
Resting on a nearby table long forgotten, half-buried under drifts of ash and debris a helmet lay dormant. Forged in a style wholly foreign to Modern design, it bore thin, crystalline filigree across its crown. As the shimmer from the box spilled across the room, those veins of crystal came alive, glowing faintly in mirrored rhythm. The same color. The same pulse. Dim. Bright. Dim again. Whatever was inside the box, it had reached out. And something else had heard it.

Absent all specific evidence, Merion was rapidly coming to the instinctive conclusion that the box wanted to be opened. He decided to treat his instincts as reliable in this instance, and did not open the box. He did, however, take it all the way back to the shuttle, strap it in safely, then tramp all the way back to the chamber yet again to snag that helmet. On the way, he realized belatedly there was a good chance the

concentric star maps carved into the floor. Cracks run through the inlays. Entire constellations have been obliterated.
and the
ancient star patterns on the walls
were significantly greater treasures than whatever the box wanted him to think it was. He got good recordings with the gear in his helmet as he walked through.

Casting caution to the winds, he dared to pick up the helmet.
 

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Objective IA – Forward Echo: Establishing the Ice Line

Rellik stood in silence, the Fire Tear in his palm still faintly pulsing like a heartbeat preserved through time. And in that beat, he felt something. The moment his fingers had brushed the crystal's edge, the world had seemed connected. He now felt that he, Laphisto and Zinayn were now connected. Bound by some legacy too large for any of them to hold alone. He studied all of Laphisto's words to Derron Daks Derron Daks - Rellik making a note that in the confusion he had been a poor leader and not introduced himself. The situation unfolding in front of him just ate at his intellectual and spiritual mind. Keeping it extremely busy and overall concerned for his friends very being. An infiltration of the mind is a virus unlike anything else.

These are my people. Whatever knowledge you uncover, treat them as more than relics.
When a Kiev'arian died, the body would fade, and in its place, the Fire Tear remained. It was… sacred. We gave them to the gods, so the soul could be reborn.
My father used to say… it was because we were no longer in the embrace of our gods.

A fire tear - He know knew what they were called. Another step unto the mystery. Yet Rellik wondered how long Laphisto had known all of this information. He did not recall ever hearing this information before but now they both knew it and the Diarch would not let any of it slip by. Gods, essence transference into the fire tears, and now the connection he felt to all who held one.

He stood deep in thought gently analyzing the slightly pulsing crystal now in his hands. It had not connected to him the same way it did to Laphisto but it recognized it was in the hands of another.

Even without the force Rellik acknowledged it was sensing everything inside of him. So Rellik did his best while holding the Fire-Tear to feel positive, warm, and strong. Ensuring that the soul within knew it was not to be destroyed or harmed in any way. The soul inside still held agency, still judged those who reached for it and he respected it.


"These aren't trinkets," Laphisto had said. "They're pieces of lives."

Rellik agreed as he turned the Tear gently in his hand, feeling its smooth surface. The thought dragging him to his next conclusion. The tether he felt to everyone could also be tied to the planet. When he held a stone he realized it was also negating the sickness of being somewhere that is null to the force. Lastly, the planet seemed to resent being disturbed. Perhaps that was its power. That all things here are connected under something - even the planet itself. Those might have been the gravitational shockwaves that rippled throughout and why Laphisto was able to withstand them.

And so he knelt, finally, out of reverence and to apologize. He pressed the Tear gently to the earth and closed his eyes. Awaiting to see if any form of reaction would come of it. After a few moments he whispered into the silence, "We came to learn, to help the Kie'varan people. Laphisto is with us and we are with him. Let us be more than strangers"

Tags: Derron Daks Derron Daks Laphisto Laphisto Diarch Reign Diarch Reign Zara Saga Zara Saga Zinayn Zinayn
 

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Objective I

Tags: Diarch Rellik Diarch Rellik Zinayn Zinayn Zara Saga Zara Saga Laphisto Laphisto

Reign was immediately concerned upon speaking with Laphisto. The levity was welcome but there was something off about his friend.

However when Reign attempted to get a reading in the force, he noticed it was absent from him. He had not noticed immediately due to consistent training with Ysalamiri but as soon as he wanted to call on it and he couldn’t, he ached.

He had no time to worry about himself though, as no sooner than he noticed the absence had his long time friend and ally grabbed what had appeared to be a gem from one of the corpses.

What followed left the Diarch nothing less than flabbergasted. Laphisto seemed to take part in a conflict within his own mind.

As he snapped back to reality, Reign saw his brother go for a similar gem. It was after this that Laphisto spoke again.


“What is this place Laphisto.. with your leave I would indeed like to search for a..fire tear.. of my own.. but I know not where to start”

he had felt some imperceptible tug at the back of his consciousness, as if something was calling to him across space and time..




 




Zara stared at the shattered remnants of the Kiev'arian warrior like they might spring back to life and explain themselves. The still-glowing Fire Tear, pulsing softly against the ash like a heartbeat cut adrift, made her stomach twist. It was beautiful, sure. Haunting, definitely. But it also looked alive. Or worse, aware.

Her lips curled in discomfort, one perfectly manicured brow lifting like it had just spotted a bug on a designer coat.

"Nope." she said under her breath, folding her arms tightly again, her voice feathered with that unmistakable Zara cocktail of disdain and barely-hidden unease. "Absolutely not. I'm not… holding someone's soul." She glanced down at the nearest Tear like it had personally offended her. "What if it remembers being in a chest? What if it's judging me? What if it doesn't like blondes?"

She took a dainty step back, nearly bumping into Zinayn. "Here." she said, flicking a finger toward the ground near his boots. "You can have mine. You look like you collect weird glowing rocks for fun anyway."

But even as she joked, her eyes didn't leave the Fire Tear. Something about it kept pulling her gaze - softly, insistently, like gravity, or guilt. She bit her lip, resisting the sudden, uncomfortable sensation that maybe she was supposed to pick one up. That maybe this was important.

Then Rellik moved, and all that uneasiness shifted into something quieter, heavier.

She watched as the Diarch knelt, Fire Tear held with delicate reverence between fingers that had surely broken bones. The golden glow of his eyes dimmed slightly, softened, as he pressed the crystal to the ground like it was a holy offering. It was… weird. Zara didn't really do reverence. But this? This felt like something. His voice was low, just a whisper, but she heard it. She felt it.

Her throat tightened unexpectedly. Something in the moment tugged at her in a way she wasn't ready for. She hated that. Hated when her armor cracked even a little. Her hands, previously perched on her hips like she was the one in charge of the situation, now drifted toward her chest, fingers pressing lightly against the fabric of her suit.

"Okay." she murmured, almost to herself. "Well… that's not fair. You can't kneel. That's - ugh. Now I look like a jerk."

She crouched beside one of the fallen, careful, reluctant. She didn't touch the Tear. Not yet. Her eyes flicked up to Rellik, then to Laphisto, and for a second, her usual bratty sparkle dimmed into something else - curiosity, maybe. Or fear.

"Just for the record." she said aloud, mostly to the universe. "If I grab one of these and it screams or melts my brain, I am absolutely blaming all of you."

But she stayed there, knees in the dust, staring at the soul of a warrior who died before history remembered how to say their name. Not picking it up. Not yet. But not walking away either.

Which, for Zara, was practically a spiritual awakening.

 

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