Tomb Raiders, Mostly Proportionate (Levantine Sanctum Dominion of Tash-Taral)

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Anders Sivas"]

"I don't hate much-"

The voice percolated through the dark, bounced gently off the mossy rock of the tree-covered crypt, and came to a wavering halt near Anders. Its source was, as of yet, unseen -- right up until a sky-blue lightsabre cast its glow around a ragged corner. Then in came Shule Windspeaker, an old/young man much as Anders was a man/woman -- a great deal depended on perception.

"-but I'm really not fond of places like this. It seems like this particular Sith Lord just camped out in the oasis, and turned the only worthwhile arable land for a thousand klicks into his personal monument. Shule Windspeaker -- you?"

OOC/ Disclaimer for those reading the thread. Previous posts in this threads by Shule were made under the accounts Jethro Merrill and Ia'raklane Beorht, which were recently merged into this one.

 

[Yasha Cadera]

"Gaahahah!" I scream.

"Son of a bantha!" Bucket yells. I stop my little scream and blink at the droid.

"Gosh, Bucket why weren't you paying attention?"

"I was looking forward... Sorry boss." I shake my head and turn to the light and sunny intruder. Well, we're all intruders here. "Anders Sivas. The droid's Bucket and I'm hoping the sithspam in this place is the dormant kind. What a .. Horrible person. Who does that? 'I don't know about you, but when I die, plant my dead corpse In the only good land around,' gee, Sith are jerks."

[member="Shule Windspeaker"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Anders Sivas"]

"Jerk is the word. Colloquial, but apt." He shrugged and deactivated the sabre. "I generally find that Darksiders aren't defined by their malevolence, they're defined by their self-centeredness. Even the ones that do what they do for the greater good are generally only trying to make themselves feel significant, validated..."

He gestured at the moss-clad tunnels. "As for the guardians, they're asleep for now, yes. We'll need to be quick. I've brought a pack full of moldable nullification resin. Whatever we find in there, I mean to neutralize it, and hopefully this place will lose some of its...well...memory."

 

[Yasha Cadera]

"You know? I think you're right. Narcissistic egocentric miscreants." I'm speaking to you, Shorn. . . What? Mouldable resin. Better than my idea: grab the thingnandnrun away until I could shove it in a star. Stars. Your new galactic garbage disposal.

I walk further in the tunnels and feel my foot squish on something not ground nor moss. I gulp. "I get the feeling most Sith needed more hugs as a child. Got a problem with little Warrie? Hug it out. Save the Galaxy from... This." I gesticulate to the tunnel and slooooowly take my foot off the slumbering creature I'd stepped on. Thankfully I'm light! Hah.

"I can strip the memory out of the place after you nullify the artifact. Teamwork rocks."

 

[Jorus Merrill]

The Bullet Time touched down on the sands of Tash-Taral. It wasn't long before Jorus, wrapped in desert gear, emerged from the microcorvette with a speeder bike and a Korriban Compass. He didn't much like using the latter, but he had to admit its utility, and it didn't exactly require blood sacrifice or even anger to use.

"Captain Merrill to anyone in range," he broadcast, slipping onto the speeder bike. "I've got a reading -- looks like an abandoned temple on the north continent, about twenty klicks from where I touched down. Heading there now."

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Anders Sivas"]

"Ever seen a star with indigestion?"

He spoke quietly, walked quietly -- the Sithspawn would be out for a little while, but no reason to tempt fate.

"Strip the memory out -- interesting. Very interesting. Most Dark Side nexuses are little more than a memory's imprint. Granted, sometimes the imprint goes deep."

A touch, just so, on a series of Sith runes -- whoever this youngish man was, he was fluent in ancient High Sith -- opened a stone door, and he descended a stair into a Chamber of Unspecified Nastiness.

 

[Kaida Taldir]

[member="Jorus Merrill"]


Deserts. It just had to be deserts. The only place more annoying would be a hellish hothouse like Gehenna or Mustafar. Unfortunately, this did not particularly improve the cryomancer's mood as she looked upon the sands of Tash-Taral when her dropship touched down upon the planet.



As it happened she had picked up on the transmission sent out by the Lord of Hyperlanes and indeed noticed the Bullet Time. Whenever this writer reads the name, they think of scenes from Matrix and Max Payne.


"Captain Taldir, message received. I am about to land and we have picked up on the reading as well. I will head to the temple as well." Message sent and she had quickly saddled up on a speeder bike. Some of the Eldorai soldiers stayed behind to guard the dropship, a small scouting party joined her. Off to explore an ancient temple on a desert world that was undoubtedly filled with monsters and horrors!

 

[Yasha Cadera]

[member="Shule Windspeaker"] "I. Ah. No. I've never seen a star with . . . Gosh what's that like, eh? Solar indigestion? Don't get in the way of a solar burp." I walk on, Bucket taking the lead. We must be some twenty metres underground and the air has gone damp and cold.

"I can't do it myself. But with another strong in the Force? The right side of it? I can give it a hefty go. Lock it in a loop. Restrain it from outside influence or from influencing the outside. At the very least I can try." Ever since Mikhail killed [member="Valik"], I've had these dream-whispers. Bits of things floating around my brain.

I figure his death left an imprint of the Kiffar in my brain, it's not fading as quickly as the others I've attached to at the time, but his death was violent and jarring. As it is, today I feel the enrapture of being in such a place and it sickens me. Pair that with the rumbles of cognizant Tuk'ata around and I can get by... For five minutes before my brain bucks it off. On with the jokes. "Couldn't have built an elevator. What kind of Sith is this? We have to walk to his gross body? Ew. Gross."

 

[Valik]

Deep in the womb of [member="Anders Sivas"] an alchemist/baby-possessor sighed mentally. This woman had no constitution whatsoever. It seemed Mikhail sure knew how to pick 'em. As always his Force signature, as well as emotions, were hidden through use of Art of the Small. Didn't mean that he couldn't feel his surroundings, that they were in a place of dark power, that Andra was with a Jedi Master, or a strong Lightsider at the least but with ears and eyes and other sensory organs not fully developed he didn't know exactly where they were, nor what they were doing. Riding side-saddle on the adventurers of an all-too-impressionable Empath without knowing what you were doing was a horrible thing.

Still, Valik felt the familiar presence of Sithspawn. He was never much to sense the number of people in a room, or pick up a jedi padawan 50 meters away in the long grass, but he knew Sithspawn and Sith Artifacts. They were close, perhaps to both. This place almost felt like Korriban, almost. What trouble had Valik's caretaker gotten them into this time?

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Anders Sivas"]

"That's a handy talent, I'll admit-"

He decided it would be better to be quiet. The longer the 'spawn slept their unnatural sleep, the more likely their awaking.

The crypt was sealed, and undisturbed. Tash-Taral was like that. On the one hand, he was tempted to put a hole in the casket, liquefy the resin and pour it in. On the other hand, he had no desire to wake up this particular Dark Lord.

So he began to mold large gummy sheets of paper-backed resin around the entire fething sarcophagus.

 

[Seydon of Arda]

~Easterly, a Township edging the Thon-Hed petrified forest and the Parched Delta south-and-east again...~

As like his habit, Seydon of Arda dropped out from the small fleet cloud harrying the Bullet Time's hindquarters, to sink the Relentless down over an overcast cloud cataract hanging above an emptied great lake basin. There, struck toothily on an eroding cliff lipping over a wind-shrieked rocky outcropping, was a small outpost den. He counted eighteen dwellings, built from clay, shale, mortared together with chipping pastes, oxidized antenna scutes propped up on the roofing like masts. Ratty banners inked in slashed characters trailed off the taller households, looking constantly harried by the wind.

He cycled the Relentless onto landing protocols and jetted past the settlement to a flattened scale of white rock a quarter kilometre outside village limits. Inhabitants, most garbed in re-patched flightsuits, purposefully sombre tunics and reflective ponchos, emerged at the engine shrieks to watch. The vessel put down onto taloned stanchions atop the stone-crop and wheezed its weight onto sympathetic hydraulics. Already as Seydon disembarked, dressed in fading trousers, shirt, jacket, and belt harnesses, bolder locals were ascending up his way along a natural pathway cleaned out of surrounding sand.

"...Who be you?" Said the first in a chitinous mask.

"And why've ye come so far to our likkle patch of nothingness?" Asked a second, refitting a breath mask. "Eh?"

"Not had visitors for some while. Be you a trader?"

Seydon glanced from their faces to his opened compass, noting how two floating needles vibrated incessantly towards the open lake pit. "No. I've come with friends, explorers."

"Explorer?"

"Not myself," He shook his head and thumbed at the swords idling behind his right shoulders. "I look after beasts and things that shouldn't be."

Chitinous Mask cocked their face slightly. "Hunter then, I take ye?"

"Aye."

Both looked to each other and the other three inquisitive elders standing a handful of paces back. "...You hire out?"

"Such is my vocation, aye. There's no finer monster slayers than Dunaan."

"That remains to be seen," Breath Mask interjected, pointing back down the hillside for the township. "Come with us, then. The Wise Child will tell if you're any use to us."

 

[Yasha Cadera]

[member="Shule Windspeaker"]

Thank the Goddess he's not opening the lid. Reminding myself why I thought it was a good idea to wait for my cheesecake date with [member="Kitt Solo"] by Sith Artifact raiding on Tash-Taral, while suffering from Morning Sickness is a futile pursuit of 'I was bored'. Thankfully, I'm neither showing nor in Andra mode. Anders is the better face for being taken as an idiot with super powers.

"Dude, are y-yes you are. Bucket, keep a weather eye. Don't touch anything." I settle on the ground and pull my knees in: one upward with an elbow propped on top, the other slid in to my hip. My eyes shut but it doesn't matter as I feel outward with the Light. This land is sick.

And I'm a healer. I touch a hand to my stomach and let my babies know it's going to get rocky, but okay. Then I open my mind like a blossoming flower and begin taking stock of the dismal memories in this place. Wisps of putrid coloured gas seems to begin draining toward my open hand, a surge of dark memories swelling. [member="Valik"]

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Anders Sivas"] [member="Valik"]

Even a Master whose emphasis lay more on insight than on power -- even a man like that could have his perceptions skewed by a place like this. The Dark Side clouded everything. As Anders did his? work, though, and as the nullification resin sealed off the casket from the Force, the hunched-over Jedi began to feel again. Among the things he began to intuit were Anders' gender (Dagoyan-trained adepts being notoriously resistant to all things mental), her pregnancy, something deeply amiss about the future of said pregnancy-

And the tuk'ata, all of them, waking up.

"Bail."

 

[Yasha Cadera]

Spirits lying Ill in their graves require above all rectification. Whether for sins past, memories wished for or vengeance unanswered, the spirits of the dead and dark require a forceful yet tender hand. I tug on each string, blowing away the chaff from that which the forces resting here decided was incomplete, and I solve them. Oh, not really, it's a trick, but a convincing one. The energies begin to bend and shift, coiling until with a bucking spasm, my eyes snap open.

"Boss!?" Bucket readied his scattergun and the weapon powered up. The droid didn't wait. The droid fired at a seething Tuk'ata about to bite off my knee like a chew toy. "Bail is good!"

Hopping to my feet, I hold both hands up and try to put the animals back asleep. Several fall groggy, but without the proper concentration Ther is no way I'd be successful for so many. "Bucket clear a path!" I grab [member="Shule Windspeaker"] s hand and run.

 

[Seydon of Arda]

Their Wise Child kept to their self in a depressed slant falling out into the emptied lake. They took Seydon close, strolling upon a pathway marked by the sanded, wind-carved backbone of some once vast and deathly sandworm. Passing on he saw replanted dreshae-oak poles lining either side of the path, each heavily festooned with scrimshaw tablets, bracelets, charm bangles, necklace and fragile, gem studded tiaras. They jangled in the breeze, issuing disarming whistles tuned to an eerie scale. Seydon couldn't hear his footsteps for a time and even breathing was just a gritted sensation of sourly hot wind running down his throat.

A gate, giant paired ribs serrated inwardly by old marrow-rot and hung with further bone-charms, was marked to ward off the sloped pathway running down into a narrow crevice. It ended haltingly in a shelled clay-igloo, a shanty chimney coughing white oily smoke, and Seydon could feel the sharp whiff of acrid animal fat much too keenly.

"She resides here," Said Chitinous Mask obviously. "Speak with her. If she finds good counsel in you, then we'll pay for your blade. If she does not, what you do with yourself afterward is your concern."

The Dunaan shouldered his blade-sheaths, taking care navigating the glass-smooth incline sliding into the old eddy-trap. His brief guides kept their standing positions behind the ribbed gate-arch and profusely crossed their hands into intricate gestures of warding. That scent of old and strange magic wafted up to him behind a beaded curtain and beyond, a diminutive and apple-headed child sat cowled. Light from a primitive cast-oven lit her shoulders with pyre-glows.

When her face craned off its rest on her tiny sternum, the Dunaan saw she was no child at all.

"...Well come in, don't stand there like a beetle chomped fool."

 

[Livia Maddox]

Seven of the ships didn't power down.

Three of them continued to buzz around the Sikke Vahan being chased by gunships and the quick-blasting target arrays of her gunners. Livia sat in the same Command Chair and watched her crew bustle around the Command Deck with a satisfied lift to her eyebrows. They were efficient.

This was fantastic.

Two of the ships raced for the stars, Livia had Sensors copy down the transponder codes and told the crew to leave them off. They'd come back or wouldn't. She'd rather have some poor pirate sod get out and confirm the reports that the Sanctum was taking Tash-Taral.

The other two were vapour and clouds of wrecked gasses. She wouldn't mourn their passing.

 

[Ashin Varanin]

[member="Anders Sivas"]

Her hand closed around his, yanking him along, just as he sealed the last of the nullification resin sheets into place. Assuming the tuk'ata didn't remove it -- tuk'ata varied widely in sentience -- the sarcophagus' shielding would let the tomb's nexus fade away to a fraction of its former stature. It would take quite a while, weeks or months, but in the end it'd be a nice peaceful oasis-

Except eventually had remarkably little relevance to now. He ran along with her, finding the first opportunity to extricate his hand.

 

[Jorus Merrill]

One didn't just catch up with [member="Seydon of Arda"]. As a matter of course, the Dunaan walked trails where lesser explorers could have spent lifetimes cataloging. With more than his share of first contacts and new worlds under his belt, Jorus was still fascinated by the surpassing strangeness of the culture they'd encountered. The details escaped him; he wasn't at his best. An unexplained urgency drove him on, as if this ostensibly simple errand had more significance than he'd anticipated.

He was a good way from catching up to Seydon; he'd reached the edge of this camp, redolent with detail he couldn't catalog let alone comprehend. Maybe the purpose he felt had to do with whatever had brought Seydon here.

A local guide, one he'd met before when he rediscovered this world -- colonial perspectives abounded -- lit a flare to sign off on his approach.

 

[Yasha Cadera]

The moment [member="Shule Windspeaker"] wanted came quickly as we rounded a corner in the crypt and I hit the deck and slide. Hands yanked over my head as a bipedal Tuk'ata pounced for the space my head had been. I raise a hand and send a telekinetic push to take the creature backward. Popping up from the slide, I unlatch my blaster pistol and fire into another marauding Tuk'ata, then another.

"Cover me! I've got an idea!" If I can get enough protection, I might be able to imprint the Tuk'ata with a suggestion to protect the crypt in a different way. Now, the creatures are protecting the sarcophagus, but if they were to be funnelled into keeping others out, protecting others from the Sarcophagus forevermore to leave the crypt undisturbed, would it not be a grand idea?

"I hate it when you say that, Boss!" Bucket grabs me around the waist and pushes me forward, I put a hand to my temple and begin to connect one by one with the snarling minds. The less sentient Tuk'ata would be the easiest, working upward in complexity.

'Protect from the Sarcophagus. Guide out. Protect from the Sarcophagus. Guide the strangers out and away.'

"Why're some of them running away?!" Bucket asks.

"Shule, how far are we from the entrance? Will we make it?" I ask.

 

[Seydon of Arda]

"Someone is here. A man."

"I suppose you will be a beetle-chomped fool, then. For a little while," Said the Wise Child. The township runner ducked out of the oval entrance. She receded a naked, skin-hung limb back up the awning of her shawl sleeve, gesturing back up the ravine way. "...Well on you go. There's business afoot."

Seydon discharged from the cream-walled hut and extricated back up the whistling runway. The breeze kept up a hissing keen, making the marker-poles with their intricate bonewyte carving art murmur serpentine notes that brought up a sense of disarmament. Dust was like talcum powder. The Dunaan eased past the little crowd of goggled locals, hitching up their clogged breathalyzer filters over their noses, watching him. It was the eyes, they had decided. The damned slit-eyes, orb-gold, filled with whatever fell purposes kept a bewitched traveler on the road.

He spotted [member="Jorus Merrill"] looking bedraggled by the aridity. "...Captain?"