Dominion The Vault of Iron Will | TF Dominion of a Empty Hex

[Tarra Vos]

The whispers became little more than echoes of unbidden thoughts. Back to the shadows where they always lurked. Out of sight, but never out of frame.

Tarra slowly strode through the wreckage as it burned. The ground sloped only slightly from the impact the ship had made with its descent abruptly arrested. One gloved hand slid over the twisted ruin as she made a turn around a distorted frame. The armored figured paused for a moment, stooped down to enter the compartment she'd been unceremoniously flung from earlier.

It was no surprise to see the body there. Limp. Silent. Eyes wide open staring into an unseen distance. Tarra's stomach didn't knot because of the blood or the very sight of death. Screams of blaster fire in the nearby area spoken of urgency, but what possible need was there to hurry now?

Slowly, she ducked inside and knelt down before the corpse. Her hand reached out toward their chest. It paused. Then the tips of her fingers curled about a strand before she jerked her hand back. A light ping of metal as it snapped might have been heard if it weren't for the battle and the pounding of her own heart.

"You failed."

The polished lenses of her helm turned down toward the tags now in the palm of her hand. An unwelcome, but familiar voice filled the compartment, but she didn't bother to look back at them.

"The mission has failed."

She turned her head to the side just to confirm they were standing there. Somehow. It wasn't right, but doubting her own senses? Who would conjure an illusion like this after they'd already brought their target down? Who cared about a single trooper in the grand scheme of things?

"Especially a failure."

Her fingers curled about the name tag. Tightened. In a single motion she whipped her hand back and threw them toward the Overseer. Tarra surged to her feet and pivoted on a heel to face them.

As the barrel of a gun began to slide into view, her hand whipped around to knock it aside as she took a step forward. Her strike was blocked with expert timing befitting one of her instructors. Her hands exchanged places and she forced the blaster to arc over their heads, carbon scoring marking up what remained of the wreckage overhead. A jab at his kidneys was knocked aside, but left him open to body check that sent him back a step.

"Failures don't belong in this unit!"

It was enough. The Trooper's black boot lifted from the ground in order to draw out the knife nestled against the side of her leg.

"Failures like you should have to damn sense to die and spare us your disgrace!"

With a flick, the blade of the knife rotated in her grasp to point toward the ground. It was stifling. Her helmet. The wreckage. The accusations. Her heart was pounding. Her lungs were laboring. Suddenly the Shadow Trooper roared. Instead of launching herself at the helmetless figure before her, however, she brought the knife to bear and plunged it in.

The inferno of pain electrified her arm, her shoulder, and set her mind ablaze. With the knife embedded in her left palm, Tarra managed to suck in a sharp breath and then fixed the blurred figure in her mind's eye with her gaze. "If you want to kill me, do it yourself," she spat.

A Foundation Storyteller
Rolled 5​

 

[Cailen Corso]

​

Tags: Vilka Keldra
Location: Jedi Meditation Chamber, Koboh
Round: 1
Roll: 7

Koboh was a strange planet, one so steeped in the Force that Cailen could actually sense it as he and Master Keldra traveled to the Jedi Meditation Chamber where his first test as her Padawan would take place. He was nervous for a lot of reasons. Abandonment was an extreme reaction for Vilka to have should he fail, but being left behind by Jedi Masters was all Cailen really knew. For that reason alone, today felt like his first -and possible only- chance to prove himself a worthy student.

She must've noticed Cailen's quietness, and perhaps even his inner thoughts.

"Do not feel less if you can't resist the tests at first - that is the case with us all. Resisting comes with time and we can come here as often as you'd like afterward to keep practicing."

Cailen nodded, a confident expression hiding shadows of doubt within. "I'll do my best," he assured her.

The pair arrived at the chamber and entered together, but Cailen's senses were quickly overpowered. He kept his boots steady on the stone floor, but he could feel it shifting nonetheless. "Master?" the Padawan called out. A voice answered, but it wasn’t Vilka’s. It was an uncomfortable whisper that sounded like a blend of several people from Cailen’s past.

Specifically, his former Masters. All three of them.

“You’re doing well,” it said. “For a runaway.” Cailen squinted as he tried to pinpoint the source of the whispers. “For a failure,” it goaded. Cailen winced.

“I didn’t run away,” he corrected. “The Force called for me, and I followed it. And I’m not a failure. I’m a work in progress.”

It was admittedly difficult for him to believe the words he spoke wholeheartedly when he had so much evidence to the contrary, but deep down inside, Cailen knew that he wasn’t perfect. Nobody was. Maybe that was the ‘current truth’ that Master Keldra spoke of.

 

[Vilka Keldra]

STARLIGHT
VAULT OF IRON WILL | KOBOH
TAG: Cailen Corso | A Foundation Storyteller
ROLLED:

Spoiler

-Round 1: 13
-Round 2: 16

​

The fog cleared almost entirely as her mind started resisting.

Vilka could still feel the weight pressing against the mental walls, but Vemric Keldra 's words still echoed faintly, trying desperately to shake her resolve. She had long since made peace with her cousin and he had forgiven her for her judgement early on in her training. The whispers now were just that - echoes of a time long since passed.

With a clearer mind now, Vilka could focus more on other senses. She reached out through the empyrean, trying to sense what her Padawan was doing, how he was faring with the onslaught. She knew the Vault's attempts were particularly strong this day.

The Jedi Master could faintly feel the emotions roiling through young Cailen. She couldn't be physically next to him to guide him, but she could channel him some calm. He needed to navigate his own ghosts somehow and learn how to beat them back.

Before long, despite the frustration running through him, he seemed to at least gain some sort of clarity, if only for a brief moment. It was enough for Vilka. She continued to channel him some calm as she settled more into her own surroundings.

Looking about the room, the Sephi started fortifying her mind more, mentally preparing herself for whatever the Vault will throw at her next.

 

[A Foundation Storyteller]

The Vault of Iron Will | TF Dominion of a Empty Hex​

Round 3: The Unseen Strike (Force Suppression & Reflex Test)

For a moment, the pressure lifts—but then everything vanishes. The Force, the very energy that has been with them since their earliest training, is suddenly gone.

There is no warning. No shift. No sensation of being drained—only the emptiness where the Force should be. And then, it strikes. An unseen force lashes out, fast and brutal, aiming to knock them down. They have no precognition, no heightened awareness—only their instincts. Can they react, or will they crumble when stripped of the Force?

Roll a 1d20:

• Odd Roll: The strike catches you off guard. You falter, vulnerable without the Force's power.
• Even Roll: Anticipate the blow, relying on instinct to endure.

 

[Caltin Vanagor]

Body of Boulder - Will of Iron
Xorrn
Vault of Iron Will

His former Padawan, Asara was yelling at him. Why? He just looked at her. What was she so angry about? She was not dealing with what he was at the moment. Having to see and all but confirm his concerns, Caltin was not the Jedi he was before that fateful day on Kashyyyk. Or was he? Was this indeed the blessing it could be considered? Speaking of old Masters… what was he doing here? This had to be some kind of trick now…

“He” is a rather infamous Jedi in history. Known for his violet lightsaber, his mastery of Shatterpoint… and Vaapad.

Are you just going to stand there gawking at me?

Then it came out of nowhere. Someone, something struck him, but did not get the full effect. He did not see it coming, he did not sense any threat. This was another trick. There were no ysalamiri or the type in here, he would not have felt anything the moment he stepped into the vault. One thing was sure for Caltin though…

Whatever it was in this room was messing with the wrong Jedi. A Guardian who trained his physical body harder and harder each day. Running obstacle courses and honing his senses tighter by the feeling. He was not some zen master or anything ridiculous, but this attack on him was a blessing in disguise.

He had forgotten what he was when his connection had changed. Now, he remembers.

Good, you are paying attention.

What do you want from me?

To pay attention.

Dice Roll - 12 (I see you liked those tacos! )

A Foundation Storyteller • Tyrus Vastor
[Text in Brackets is spoken on Comm-link] ~Like this is through the Force~​

 

[Asara Ta'kona]

ASARA TA'KONA || STORM
VAULT OF IRON WILL
TAG: Tyrus Vastor A Foundation Storyteller
GEAR: Link shiz here

​

Tasia continued walking, still feeling the doubts in her heart about whether she was good enough to stand in the shadows of all the great jedi before her. But all of that was about to change, soon she felt nothing. She wasn't sure when it happened but the force was gone, she felt alone despite being able to see people only metres away, it was actually quite a disconcerting feeling, and she would need to have her wits about her to remain safe in this unusual environment.

Something caught her eye, it looked like a tribal warrior running at her with anger in his eye, arms stretched out to push her to the ground. Her training kicked in and she twisted with his momentum. Her strong arms took him, one hand on his wrist the other on his belt. The man tumbled past her at high speed. She looked past her to see the broken heap that usually appears when sixteen stone changes direction too fast but he was gone, the only evidence of his passing was the steely tension in her muscles as she remained in her martial pose.

I got a 16
​

 

[Bido Roz’lyn]

ROLL: 15

BIDO ROZ'LYN/"DOG LADY"

A Foundation Storyteller

GEAR:
Flight suit
Personal Energy Shield
Sidearm
Back-sheathed short sword

And then, she opened her eyes.

She was back inside the stone-wall chamber once again. No water, no hooded beings, no bodies.

And no more false memories.

She could now clearly remember how she actually got here. She had arrived at the same time as the others, not in her Ugly, but in her X-wing. She had been led to this room, and the whole ordeal had been rather boring until she reached the chamber. Then, the moment she had stepped over the threshold, she had seemingly gone catatonic.

… And now she was back to normal.

Well, that was fun. She had to hand it to these Jedi. They knew how to party. Most beings needed to consume chemical narcotics to experience trip-outs and hallucinations. Here, apparently, all you needed to do was enter one of these rooms. Wonderful.

Let's not ever do this again.

She shook her head dismissively and turned to leave. With a couple strides, she reached the door and reached to open the latch.

And that's when it hit her.

A massive, overwhelming, powerful kinetic force struck her front! The impact carried her across the room and her back impacted the wall so hard it knocked the dust free from the stone gaps. And she felt something big crack.

Her body impacted the ground in a tangled mess of limbs, and oddly, she felt less pain than she had been expecting. She took a moment to breathe and calm herself. When she managed to slow her heart rate down, she decided to get back up.

And she couldn't move her legs.

She tried to push against the floor with her hands and that's when overwhelming pain exploded in the upper half of her back. Oddly enough, after almost a century of military combat experience, she actually recognized what a broken spine felt like.

"CAN SOMEBODY HELP ME, PLEASE!"

 

[Tarra Vos]

The Shadow Trooper stood with the knife buried in their hand, their lenses directed to the figure that lifted a blaster as though to shoot her where she stood. Maybe she'd failed. Maybe she deserved this, but she wasn't going to be the one that took that route out. Only her superior office could order her death; it wasn't her place to act outside of standing orders.

But the blaster ignited, the entire broken battlefield and the ruins of the crashed ship vanished.

Not the pain, of course. Tarra snorted before she tore the blade free. A flick and she set it back into her boot to free up her remaining hand. With a moment to breathe, she retrieve a bacta shot from her belt and jabbed it into her wounded hand. The relief was immeasurable. It took effort to keep her lips shut and not vocalize her response.

Without a second thought she flung the used canister aside.

Now, what was next? An empty chamber again. What was this all for? Why was she here?

This time, Tarra held the advantage. She felt... something change for an instant, but it wasn't something she'd ever fully recognized nor embraced. Its loss wasn't as immeasurable as a Jedi might find it. But danger... a Shadow Trooper knew danger. Knew death.

There was no visual indication of where the threat was coming from or what it might be. Tarra had to trust in her armor and training in the time it took for neurons to fire. She solidified her core, set her feet, and brought her hands up to ward off an invisible blow.

With a grunt, she was forced back two steps before she could strike a better stance and push back against whatever assailed her. What manner of sorcery was this?

A Foundation Storyteller
Rolled 18​

 

[Corin Trenor]

Passing between memories made manifest, each of them fell to the wayside; into shadows, into the sands of time, as dust pooled upon the stone, then into nothingness. The air, once suffocating, suddenly felt as if all the weight had been drained in an instant. Corin breathed, the rise and fall coming easier now.

Though another step ensured it was all stripped away. That connection, faint and gnawing that had grown into something far stronger, more palpable with years of honing, vanished. It left him in an instant and his skin was crawling with gooseflesh.

Quickly, Corin ducked beneath a flying kick that leapt from the shadows. Then a fist, another, another kick. A wild assortment of attacks from flailing limbs, sometimes wild and sometimes precise, with Corin narrowly avoiding them all with only the skills Dagon instilled within him.

Each of them, Corin came to see, were pieces of himself from different paths in his life. His youngest self, a street rat from Denon, flailed wildly. With bold and brazen confidence came his Padawan self, with all bravado and a modicum of skill to match. His earliest Jedi Knight variant came in with a simmering rage, held faintly beneath the surface, while the him that sought after Dagon lashed out with a flurry of furious blows, each only barely avoided by Corin.

Though the current version of himself, mirrored and mired in shadow, struck him. Corin was forced to block with his arms, bracing against the old stone, and for all of a moment, the two locked with their changed eyes, seeing into the soul of the other, before it fell away to shadow once more.

Dice Result: 4 A Foundation Storyteller

 

[Ava Black]

| Location | The Vault, Xorrn​

| Objective | Survive​

​

The sound of her mother's screams echoed in her mind as she found herself once more in the dark. Memories she once buried from her past surged at her like a torrential tide as her mind was in turmoil from the sudden resurgence. By all accounts, she should have been dead - victim to the bloodthirsty frenzy of a Sith that knew not friend from foe or child from soldier. She anticipated the strike and made no move to evade it; she had left it to fate to decide what would happen to her. ​

​

Where the temple sought to strike her using her fears and memories against her, she remembered something else.​

​

Her eyes opened as her memories of that day came to her. She didn't die. Memories of a man, larger than life itself surfaced as he came to defend her; her godfather Zakaria Black, a stormtrooper general for the New Imperial Order coming to her rescue as he had tackled the shadowy figure away, protecting her from harm. The temple wanted to hurt her, but her memory of the man that she grew up to respect and admire had shielded her from the assault. She stood as she moved, avoiding getting struck down by the unseen forces that sought to shake her.​

​

His legacy lived on in her, and that same fiery passion to protect the weak burned just as brightly. ​

​

[ Rolled a 2 ]

A Foundation Storyteller ​

 

[Yuri Maji]

KOBOH | VAULT
TAGS: A Foundation Storyteller
GEAR: In bio
DICE ROLL: 10

---

CRYSTALIZED​

The freezing cold tore into him, left him bare and alone in the ruins of a city he once knew. It left him torn and broken with nothing else left but the memories of his mistakes and cowardice. He ran away from them, ran away from a self-inflicted fear of living in his mother's shadow when his people needed him. Tears scratched at his eyes as they almost immediately froze over, yet he felt a numbness far worse than any drug-induced low or depressive episode.

He was nothing. Little more than a pitiful mutt too scared to confront his duties. Nothing more than a depressed junkie dressed up in shiny armour once worn by a true hero of their people. He sat on his knees, curled into himself, as he contemplated his worth in this galaxy. If he were to disappear, nobody would cry for him or call his name. All he had was the delusion that he was making a difference by joining the Foundation.

His hand graced over the grip of his pistol as the dark thoughts burrowed deeper into his mind. But in a flash, all of it disappeared. Like nails pulled from a wound, the cold and darkness pulled away to reveal a dark and damp cave around him. Yuri fell back in confusion as he looked around to make sense of the whole thing. Was it all a lie? Where was he? His mind scrounged and grasped at whatever memories it could find to make sense of where he was and what he saw. And yet, his mane rose and a cold chill rattled his spine.

Even in his battered state, instincts screamed at him to move.

He didn't question the feeling or pondered over it, he simply smacked the controls of his jetpack and launched himself into the opposite direction. As if time slowed, he watched as the stone cracked and fragments blew over where was barely a second ago.

The moment his feet touched the ground, the cave was filled with blaster fire and a furious snarl. His fingers kept pulling the triggers of War and Peace until the deafening howls were replaced by quiet clicks. With heavy breaths, Yuri slumped against the wall and clutched his head. "It's all... it's all fake. It ain't real, mutt. It ain't real. Keep movin' forward. Keep. Movin'. Forward." He grumbled to himself as he watched the cave with glossy eyes. Words finally turned into action and he pushed himself off the cave wall to stumble ahead. Silent clicks echoed around him as he reloaded his weapons with a new determination.

"It's all fake. You're... you ain't a failure. You did your best. Come on, mutt, keep movin' forward." He continued to mumble to himself.

 

[Tyrus Vastor]

...
KOBOH
THE CHAMBER
It was just... gone.

One second, the Force and everything he was feeling and experiencing was there—choking him by the throat, pulsing in his chest, guiding every step. And then, just like that, it wasn't.

No warning. No slow drain. Just... nothing.

Tyrus's stomach twisted. He reached for the Force instinctively, but there was nothing to harness. The Force had always been part of him, as natural as breathing. Without it, he felt blind Or forced into a sensory deprivation room.

And then—WHAM!

Something hit him, hard. A crushing blow slammed into his ribs, knocking the air from his deprived lungs. He crashed onto his back, pain exploding through him. No warning. No flicker of danger. Just raw, brutal impact. For a second, he just lay there, stunned, unable to tell if he had been thrown or struck. His whole life, his instincts had been sharpened by the Force—helping him react, dodge, counter. Now, stripped of it, he was slow. Weak. Vulnerable and tired. So tired...

A growl built in his throat. No. Not like this. He rolled onto his hands and knees, gasping, his muscles aching. His mind screamed at the absence of the Force, but he forced himself to move. Something else was coming. Another strike. He couldn't feel it—but he could listen. He could see.

At the last second, he twisted. The blow clipped his shoulder instead of his chest, sending a sharp jolt of pain through him. But he was still standing.

R1=14 • R2=7​