Magdalena Bloodscrawl
The Sorceress of Ossus
Persona: Witch of Kashyyyk (See Bio)
Wearing: Armorweave Catsuit (Ultra Reflective Crimson)
Armed With: Obsolete Blaster SMG
Nightsister Energy Bow Pistol
BWE Energy Rapier
Energized Vibroblade Gauntlet
Objective: Explore
Earlier...
Magda Crownwraithe, an aspect of The Sorceress of Ossus had been in charge of the body for a while now, delighting in being reunited with her resurrected son in this era, hunting the followers of The Dark Side as they had during the Plague.
But with the delight had come the gradual understanding of just how much the man had suffered.
The Sorceress had been a questionable parent, not for lack of trying to be a good one, but because, being one of the oldest Force Spawn in existence, she simply didn't human well unless she used the personalities that had 'Crownwraithe' as a last name. Magda was simply such a strong personality that she was able to remain in control far longer than the others.
Magda, who distinguished herself from the one channeling her by wearing the traditional attire of Force Spawn-an ultra reflective armor weave catsuit, colored deep crimson to represent her loyalty to the hidden House Bloodscrawl-walked the halls of one of their new Crimson Dove Stealth Vessels, the passages of which were angular and sharp in their architecture, and colored red. They did not have the elaborate Gothic interiors of large House Io capital vessels. More utilitarian, like an imperial vessel.
These House Io Defectors truly were a lost bunch. It broke Magda's heart to hear some of their stories about having to live amongst the Cult. As The Sorceress, she had started the long, difficult work of deprogramming them as much as possible. But it wasn't easy. The distaste towards the Jedi was very real, enforced by a Culture of people already disillusioned with the Galaxy so hard they had run into the arms of the one person who seemed to be willing to try something completely different, only for her in the end to become, in some ways, much worse than all the people they had run away from.
They had run back into a Galaxy they detested because what they had fled was simply too obscene, perverted, and monstrous to continue being party to, even for a people who had been taught to hate the people that cruelty was primarily being inflicted on.
It wouldn't happen overnight. Coming to peace with the Galaxy was not an easy thing. But she swore to salvage whoever she could from the ruins of House Io's dreams and aspirations.
It hurt Magda, having to know Nathan would come to understand his daughter only through the aftermath of her ruinous effect on the lives of others who had believed in her cause, through the instruments of death and destruction she had concocted to keep her enemies at bay. Through the race of murderous artificial warriors she had created.
And all because he couldn't accept that the Force had wanted him to take the protection Elaine Tear had offered. For a man who had spent the Gulag Plague fighting his way from one nightmare into another, alternately under her influence or that of Moya De Lifte, having watched what few friends he had succumb to the endless horrors that era produced, it was the final humiliation.
The one humiliation even he could not have endured, no matter how righteous and disciplined he actually was.
Every personality inside The Sorceress asked the same question when being channeled: Would I have refused that offer?
For a Jedi, that answer might have been an easy one; The life of an innocent outweighs one's personal dignity and pride. To that she would say to such a Jedi that they have never known what it was like to grow up in a Gulag Era Ashlan Kaiserreich. Even if Nathan's pride had broken and he had allowed Elaine to protect him and his family, he would have been trading the jackals for the lions: Elaine would no doubt have seen to it that his daughter grew up a nice and brainwashed Crusader, and she no doubt would have ended up crucifying people or burning them at the stake, hanging, or beheading them for heresy. Nathan and his wife would have been kept under her thumb, probably forever.
Would that have been any better? It would simply have been a different sort of demise at that point. The demise of his last remaining shred of pride and ability to call himself a man and hold his head up high. Nathan had been in a no-win situation. He had known, on an intellectual level that to refuse Elaine's offer was almost certainly an act of suicide with Darth Phyre hunting him. But Elaine had stabbed his father in the heart and beheaded his mother when he was a teenager, and her forces had murdered the rest of his family in a protracted siege on their castle in attempt to obtain the secrets to a lost superweapon. He had been mortally wounded, which ironically had made him desperate enough to release the Sorceress herself from her imprisonment in their crypt.
Nathan couldn't not have said no to Elaine after all that.
A lot of things had changed since then.
She was headed to Kashyyyk soon, there to gather rare medicines to assist Bacta-Works, her Son's company, which was concealing not only an illegal Clone Army that had helped evacuate the temple at Dagobah, but now an illegal army of Androids AND an illegal army of Cyborgs.
Yeah, he was probably gonna go down hard for that.
Entering the Armory, she saw one of the Model 0's in question, practicing with a type of folding blaster SMG whose model had been outdated even before The Gulag Era. But it had been the mainstay side arm of nearly every Force Spawn who got their hands on it during the Plague.
The chassis of the Model 0 was naturally darkened, its skeleton-based design modeled on that of a YVH Droid. He was a 'Male' variant. Like all mechanical Nuetralizers, he was packed to the brim with concealed weapons. He however, had his quirks.
Magda found herself studying the design, trying to understand the mind of the one who had built it, wondering if it was like trying to look into Hyperspace, her attempt understand just how the Mother of
Percival Io
had started to go wrong even back then.
The Model 0 turned to her when his sensors picked her up.
"Howdy, Ma'am. Right pleasure to make your acquaintance..." the Skull faced droid said, spinning his Blaster SMG before folding it and placing it into a built in holster in his thigh that popped out for easy access before concealing itself.
"The feeling is mutual. I'm Magda. Magda Crownwraithe.
"I'm T.F.-H.I." Tee-Eff said, holding out an alloyed, skeleton like hand.
"Your name isn't like that of the other Nuetralizers," Magda noted.
"For a Model 0, the first half of our designate comes from the initials of our original name, and the second half are the initials of the faction we were...molded from..." The 0 trailed.
"H.I." Magda sounded out the initials. "Does that mean you were fashioned from a member of House Io?"
"I reckon so, Ma'am..." The 0 replied. "Them Medical Ranch Hands the Cattle Baroness built up are still trying to make sense of the records they recovered. We were not part of the network that Fixer Ranch Hands like
Akemi Io
created. Our parts ain't got the same kind of manufacturing marks or serial numbers. It was from a time the Cattle Baroness played a ton more fast and loose."
"Cattle Baroness? Ranch Hands?" Magda questioned
"Well, more like stage hands in our cases..." The 0 said. "Laertia Io was a stage magician once. A performer. And what she set up on Khemost was the greatest ongoing magic act of her whole career. Mark my words, Lady, it wouldn't have run nearly as smoothly as it managed to without us in the background, providing data from our own battles, cleaning up the unpleasantries from the reality of her crusade."
"Do you hate her?"
"That's a difficult question to answer. Yes, I was cyberized, probably against my will...but when you get...born...like I did, you have purpose. Not always a good one, but it's still a reason to chug along."
"I can't say she actively mistreated us. She was always very careful not to resort to cruelty. But we didn't see her in the same way as the other Nuetralizers. And it was clear she didn't view us in the same way as she viewed them. We were the foundation of everything she did...but foundations get covered up. We were eventually given ships, energy swords. Declared Citizens. But Shadow Citizens... can't let the rank and file Ranch Hands know how messy their birth actually was.
"What was she like, in the early days?" Magda asked, mystified.
"In her best moments...she could really make you feel where she was coming from. She really believed in her cause. Believed that creating the Nuetralizers was for the best to protect the Galaxy." Tee-Eff replied.
"She led from the front, and never asked us to do anything she wasn't willing to do. Trouble with that was, the amount of stuff she was willing to do expanded gradually. There were orders we couldn't obey. Our programming, you see, was designed by a woman who had not fully left behind light sided philosophy."
"Are you saying that she accidentally made you all too moral?" Magda asked, incredulity in her facial expression.
The 0 nodded. "She caught on quick to that. And while she never took out her frustration at that fact on us, you could tell she wasn't happy. We were perfectly willing to fight the Bryn. But not to the point of wholesale extermination, like she eventually wanted."
"When did her infamous Messiah Complex develop?"
"Oh, that developed real early. Right around after Sev Tok ..."
The Model 0 chuckled. "You have no idea how much her pride was riding on that battle. If the Nuetralizers had failed to push back the Bryn'adul there, she might have declared the entire concept a failure, and tried something else."
"So it was more precarious than anyone imagined."
"Too precarious. She always sorta bought into the image she tried to sell of herself. But her ego really took off to the moon after Sev Tok. Her children, beating the crabs away from the Silver Jedi's Doorstep..." he said almost nostalgically.
"No matter what those self serving Alliance and Jedi Historians say otherwise, the blow the Nuetralizers helped inflict at Sev Tok was the beginning of the end for the Bryn'adul war effort. Our great race shattered the myth of Bryn'adul invincibility at Sarka, even though we lost. But we ground the pieces of that myth into fine dust at Sev Tok when we won. They never recovered. Neither Militarily, nor Psychologically. Their leader, of course, had made the fatal mistake of going in under strength, possibly as a flex. Sev Tok proved he could be beaten and humiliated, and worse, that his outlook, his judgement might be fundamentally flawed. That race prided themselves on their resilient genetics. I bet Tathra had fun explaining how a bunch of machines with the personality of a social media comments section managed to kick their asses so brutally..."
"So...you don't hate her?"
"I never said that. It's just a very nuanced form of hate." Tee-Eff answered back. "In the beginning, it was about saving the galaxy from those who destroyed our homes and lives. It was easy to hate the Jedi Order for focusing only on the Sith. The die hards that stayed behind were from worlds and systems that had suffered the most for the Jedi's wilful negligence. You know how abysmal the Jedi are at public relations. They should be embarrassed at the fact that seeing multiple slasher film killings committed by catsuit wearing witches on a daily basis outside their house still wasn't enough to make more than half the population leave. So short answer? I don't hate her as much as I probably should, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't shoot her in the face. It would have been better for her had she been killed at Sev Tok. She would no doubt have a mixed legacy if she died back then, but it's better than the one she'll have when she dies now."
"You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain..." Magda trailed.
The 0 shrugged. "Something like that."
"I used to wield guns like that..." she said, changing topics. "May I see it?"
The Model 0 pulled it from his internal thigh holster and handed it to her.
Magda unfolded it and let loose a few focused sprays at a holographic target, hitting it dead center every time.
"Wow...been a while..." she giggled. "Can I barrow this?"
"Sure. I got ten of them back in my quarters."
Magda continued to refamiliarize herself with the weapon...
Later...
What stepped out of the shuttle after it landed on Kashyyyk wasn't Magda, but another face, with very dark skin and long hair. Magda was taking a backseat for now, wanting to experience and enjoy nature in this mind. And, perhaps, meet others on their own respective journeys.
But that didn't mean the Sorceress, currently the Witch of Kashyyyk, wasn't walking around armed to the teeth as she set off for her rare plants...
Efret Farr
Wearing: Armorweave Catsuit (Ultra Reflective Crimson)
Armed With: Obsolete Blaster SMG
Nightsister Energy Bow Pistol
BWE Energy Rapier
Energized Vibroblade Gauntlet
Objective: Explore
Earlier...
Magda Crownwraithe, an aspect of The Sorceress of Ossus had been in charge of the body for a while now, delighting in being reunited with her resurrected son in this era, hunting the followers of The Dark Side as they had during the Plague.
But with the delight had come the gradual understanding of just how much the man had suffered.
The Sorceress had been a questionable parent, not for lack of trying to be a good one, but because, being one of the oldest Force Spawn in existence, she simply didn't human well unless she used the personalities that had 'Crownwraithe' as a last name. Magda was simply such a strong personality that she was able to remain in control far longer than the others.
Magda, who distinguished herself from the one channeling her by wearing the traditional attire of Force Spawn-an ultra reflective armor weave catsuit, colored deep crimson to represent her loyalty to the hidden House Bloodscrawl-walked the halls of one of their new Crimson Dove Stealth Vessels, the passages of which were angular and sharp in their architecture, and colored red. They did not have the elaborate Gothic interiors of large House Io capital vessels. More utilitarian, like an imperial vessel.
These House Io Defectors truly were a lost bunch. It broke Magda's heart to hear some of their stories about having to live amongst the Cult. As The Sorceress, she had started the long, difficult work of deprogramming them as much as possible. But it wasn't easy. The distaste towards the Jedi was very real, enforced by a Culture of people already disillusioned with the Galaxy so hard they had run into the arms of the one person who seemed to be willing to try something completely different, only for her in the end to become, in some ways, much worse than all the people they had run away from.
They had run back into a Galaxy they detested because what they had fled was simply too obscene, perverted, and monstrous to continue being party to, even for a people who had been taught to hate the people that cruelty was primarily being inflicted on.
It wouldn't happen overnight. Coming to peace with the Galaxy was not an easy thing. But she swore to salvage whoever she could from the ruins of House Io's dreams and aspirations.
It hurt Magda, having to know Nathan would come to understand his daughter only through the aftermath of her ruinous effect on the lives of others who had believed in her cause, through the instruments of death and destruction she had concocted to keep her enemies at bay. Through the race of murderous artificial warriors she had created.
And all because he couldn't accept that the Force had wanted him to take the protection Elaine Tear had offered. For a man who had spent the Gulag Plague fighting his way from one nightmare into another, alternately under her influence or that of Moya De Lifte, having watched what few friends he had succumb to the endless horrors that era produced, it was the final humiliation.
The one humiliation even he could not have endured, no matter how righteous and disciplined he actually was.
Every personality inside The Sorceress asked the same question when being channeled: Would I have refused that offer?
For a Jedi, that answer might have been an easy one; The life of an innocent outweighs one's personal dignity and pride. To that she would say to such a Jedi that they have never known what it was like to grow up in a Gulag Era Ashlan Kaiserreich. Even if Nathan's pride had broken and he had allowed Elaine to protect him and his family, he would have been trading the jackals for the lions: Elaine would no doubt have seen to it that his daughter grew up a nice and brainwashed Crusader, and she no doubt would have ended up crucifying people or burning them at the stake, hanging, or beheading them for heresy. Nathan and his wife would have been kept under her thumb, probably forever.
Would that have been any better? It would simply have been a different sort of demise at that point. The demise of his last remaining shred of pride and ability to call himself a man and hold his head up high. Nathan had been in a no-win situation. He had known, on an intellectual level that to refuse Elaine's offer was almost certainly an act of suicide with Darth Phyre hunting him. But Elaine had stabbed his father in the heart and beheaded his mother when he was a teenager, and her forces had murdered the rest of his family in a protracted siege on their castle in attempt to obtain the secrets to a lost superweapon. He had been mortally wounded, which ironically had made him desperate enough to release the Sorceress herself from her imprisonment in their crypt.
Nathan couldn't not have said no to Elaine after all that.
A lot of things had changed since then.
She was headed to Kashyyyk soon, there to gather rare medicines to assist Bacta-Works, her Son's company, which was concealing not only an illegal Clone Army that had helped evacuate the temple at Dagobah, but now an illegal army of Androids AND an illegal army of Cyborgs.
Yeah, he was probably gonna go down hard for that.
Entering the Armory, she saw one of the Model 0's in question, practicing with a type of folding blaster SMG whose model had been outdated even before The Gulag Era. But it had been the mainstay side arm of nearly every Force Spawn who got their hands on it during the Plague.
The chassis of the Model 0 was naturally darkened, its skeleton-based design modeled on that of a YVH Droid. He was a 'Male' variant. Like all mechanical Nuetralizers, he was packed to the brim with concealed weapons. He however, had his quirks.
Magda found herself studying the design, trying to understand the mind of the one who had built it, wondering if it was like trying to look into Hyperspace, her attempt understand just how the Mother of
Percival Io
had started to go wrong even back then.The Model 0 turned to her when his sensors picked her up.
"Howdy, Ma'am. Right pleasure to make your acquaintance..." the Skull faced droid said, spinning his Blaster SMG before folding it and placing it into a built in holster in his thigh that popped out for easy access before concealing itself.
"The feeling is mutual. I'm Magda. Magda Crownwraithe.
"I'm T.F.-H.I." Tee-Eff said, holding out an alloyed, skeleton like hand.
"Your name isn't like that of the other Nuetralizers," Magda noted.
"For a Model 0, the first half of our designate comes from the initials of our original name, and the second half are the initials of the faction we were...molded from..." The 0 trailed.
"H.I." Magda sounded out the initials. "Does that mean you were fashioned from a member of House Io?"
"I reckon so, Ma'am..." The 0 replied. "Them Medical Ranch Hands the Cattle Baroness built up are still trying to make sense of the records they recovered. We were not part of the network that Fixer Ranch Hands like
Akemi Io
created. Our parts ain't got the same kind of manufacturing marks or serial numbers. It was from a time the Cattle Baroness played a ton more fast and loose.""Cattle Baroness? Ranch Hands?" Magda questioned
"Well, more like stage hands in our cases..." The 0 said. "Laertia Io was a stage magician once. A performer. And what she set up on Khemost was the greatest ongoing magic act of her whole career. Mark my words, Lady, it wouldn't have run nearly as smoothly as it managed to without us in the background, providing data from our own battles, cleaning up the unpleasantries from the reality of her crusade."
"Do you hate her?"
"That's a difficult question to answer. Yes, I was cyberized, probably against my will...but when you get...born...like I did, you have purpose. Not always a good one, but it's still a reason to chug along."
"I can't say she actively mistreated us. She was always very careful not to resort to cruelty. But we didn't see her in the same way as the other Nuetralizers. And it was clear she didn't view us in the same way as she viewed them. We were the foundation of everything she did...but foundations get covered up. We were eventually given ships, energy swords. Declared Citizens. But Shadow Citizens... can't let the rank and file Ranch Hands know how messy their birth actually was.
"What was she like, in the early days?" Magda asked, mystified.
"In her best moments...she could really make you feel where she was coming from. She really believed in her cause. Believed that creating the Nuetralizers was for the best to protect the Galaxy." Tee-Eff replied.
"She led from the front, and never asked us to do anything she wasn't willing to do. Trouble with that was, the amount of stuff she was willing to do expanded gradually. There were orders we couldn't obey. Our programming, you see, was designed by a woman who had not fully left behind light sided philosophy."
"Are you saying that she accidentally made you all too moral?" Magda asked, incredulity in her facial expression.
The 0 nodded. "She caught on quick to that. And while she never took out her frustration at that fact on us, you could tell she wasn't happy. We were perfectly willing to fight the Bryn. But not to the point of wholesale extermination, like she eventually wanted."
"When did her infamous Messiah Complex develop?"
"Oh, that developed real early. Right around after Sev Tok ..."
The Model 0 chuckled. "You have no idea how much her pride was riding on that battle. If the Nuetralizers had failed to push back the Bryn'adul there, she might have declared the entire concept a failure, and tried something else."
"So it was more precarious than anyone imagined."
"Too precarious. She always sorta bought into the image she tried to sell of herself. But her ego really took off to the moon after Sev Tok. Her children, beating the crabs away from the Silver Jedi's Doorstep..." he said almost nostalgically.
"No matter what those self serving Alliance and Jedi Historians say otherwise, the blow the Nuetralizers helped inflict at Sev Tok was the beginning of the end for the Bryn'adul war effort. Our great race shattered the myth of Bryn'adul invincibility at Sarka, even though we lost. But we ground the pieces of that myth into fine dust at Sev Tok when we won. They never recovered. Neither Militarily, nor Psychologically. Their leader, of course, had made the fatal mistake of going in under strength, possibly as a flex. Sev Tok proved he could be beaten and humiliated, and worse, that his outlook, his judgement might be fundamentally flawed. That race prided themselves on their resilient genetics. I bet Tathra had fun explaining how a bunch of machines with the personality of a social media comments section managed to kick their asses so brutally..."
"So...you don't hate her?"
"I never said that. It's just a very nuanced form of hate." Tee-Eff answered back. "In the beginning, it was about saving the galaxy from those who destroyed our homes and lives. It was easy to hate the Jedi Order for focusing only on the Sith. The die hards that stayed behind were from worlds and systems that had suffered the most for the Jedi's wilful negligence. You know how abysmal the Jedi are at public relations. They should be embarrassed at the fact that seeing multiple slasher film killings committed by catsuit wearing witches on a daily basis outside their house still wasn't enough to make more than half the population leave. So short answer? I don't hate her as much as I probably should, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't shoot her in the face. It would have been better for her had she been killed at Sev Tok. She would no doubt have a mixed legacy if she died back then, but it's better than the one she'll have when she dies now."
"You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain..." Magda trailed.
The 0 shrugged. "Something like that."
"I used to wield guns like that..." she said, changing topics. "May I see it?"
The Model 0 pulled it from his internal thigh holster and handed it to her.
Magda unfolded it and let loose a few focused sprays at a holographic target, hitting it dead center every time.
"Wow...been a while..." she giggled. "Can I barrow this?"
"Sure. I got ten of them back in my quarters."
Magda continued to refamiliarize herself with the weapon...
Later...
What stepped out of the shuttle after it landed on Kashyyyk wasn't Magda, but another face, with very dark skin and long hair. Magda was taking a backseat for now, wanting to experience and enjoy nature in this mind. And, perhaps, meet others on their own respective journeys.
But that didn't mean the Sorceress, currently the Witch of Kashyyyk, wasn't walking around armed to the teeth as she set off for her rare plants...
Efret Farr