Log:First Order: Massacre of Corvax Fen

First Order: Massacre of Corvax Fen

OOC Date: January 6, 2020
Location: Mustafar
Participants: First Order: Karys, Duke, and Saanvi; Knights of Ren: Oran Arcantael, Erisi Auslese, Dreman Bryce, and Kylo Ren

The planet Mustafar expands below them as the Shadow III returns to realspace, a smoking, hellish world. Grey plains of volcanic rock, carved here and there by rivers of molten magma, stretch away as far as the eye can see as the ship descends towards an oddity on the planet's otherwise barren surface. A forest of irontrees, hardy and tough, marks their destination. The ruins of Fortress Vader, named for its prior inhabitant, still loom in the distance against the orange light that paints the sky above the horizon.

As the shuttle goes through its landing routines, powering down various systems, keeping others on standby, Kylo emerges from the cockpit. "We're here for something I need," he announces, not looking at any one of them in particular. "Kill anyone who stands in our way." This is the briefing in its entirety, and he heads down the landing ramp onto the soot-stained earth.

Another day, another exciting adventure as one of Kylo Ren's disposable too--- trusted friends and allies. Oran looks much the same as he always does on these excursions, black robed, saber in hand, unlit. He hasn't said much on the trip over, but some dark little flame of emotion seems to be burning far back in there, ever so slightly discernible. What is it, who knows. Darkside for life, here, so probably anger, fear, hatred, the usual suspects. Kylo gets a long, perhaps unhappy side-eye at why they're here, but beyond that, no comment. Just walking forward, once more into the breach... ready to kill whatever tries to stop them from getting what Kylo is here to get.

Erisi is totally disposable. Eri looks like she do, black robes, altered to fit her and her own personal style, helmet that hides her face, whip at her hip and gloved hands tucked into the pockets of her robes. That's right. It has pockets. And it was on sale! The briefing is as they always are, short, to the point, and Eri nods her head as she moves to head down the ramp, gaze off towards the trees.

Always something needed and sought. Karys is to her feet, helmet down and sealing shut as she settles into step with the others. She glances aside at Saanvi and Duke, a nod given as the Vanguard is locked, loaded and ready to do as expected. As always. Following closely after the others only lasts so long as it takes for her touch ground and then she fans out to the side, her pistols drawn as she traverses the ground to offer herself a clear view ahead to take on targets. Always an unexpected outing in the assembled group.

Marching down the ramp of the Shadow, Duke pulls his carbine close to his body, his face exposed in his new armor and feeling the awful, overbearing heat of this planet. The rest of the Vanguard are noted as he begins his preliminary look around, looking for any sign of wildlife that needs to be ERADICATED.

Saanvi brings up the rear, having traded her pistol for a rifle, favoring range over multi-shot in this inhospitable setting. She manages to keep up, managing to keep her curiosity in check on this trip-perhaps it's that crazy eyed look Oran has that keeps her insatiable curiosity from taking the reigns this time.

"Details regarding Mustafar are fairly well recorded since the Clone Wars. The local area is fairly well mapped and, thanks to the Imperial archives, we don't have to do too much guesswork," Bryce offers quietly, speaking in his usual quiet, cold voice, lacking in passion or care. His eye and mask then turns outward towards the horizon.

It doesn't take long. As the group starts to enter the trees of Corvax Fen, the grove believed to be blessed by a dead sorceress by the cultists who live here, glowing eyes watch with anger. Sacred sites are only sacred if they are kept pure by their guardians, and the stormtroopers and dark warriors striding into the forest project anger and destruction.

If any doubt remains, the ragged red blade that comes tearing to life from Kylo's lightsaber hilt dispels it. These visitors do not come in peace.

With a low, suspicious call, one of the Alazmec cultists stalks towards them, followed by the other members of his band, all carrying tools meant for trimming and tending the irontrees, but in capable hands, dangerous nonetheless. They begin to circle and surround the interlopers, spreading themselves thin to do so.

One snap-hiss is followed by a second; two red blades humming to life as Oran follows Kylo's lead. The path he takes strikes some distance from Kylo, however; as the cultists fan out, so too the Knight moves to meet them.

"Well that didn't take long." Eri says, tone lightly dusted with dry humor, the woman lifting a hand up dismissively to crook fingers through the air, fire wrought with a snatch of her hand to the left, setting one of those folks on fire. No question, no 'oh who you be', conversation quite capable of happening afterwards if they make it out alive. FWOOSH. Lips crook into a pleased smile, gaze shifting to look to the next person to the left of the one she set aflame.

"Not friendly," Karys remarks and as they are slowly encircled she turns about to watch their flank, taking up a position to snap a shot as they are given a look. Her head tilts as the light reflects off her black visor. She levels her blaster at the first target and squeezing off two shots she flows through as she watches the figure drop, smoke rising as she lets loose another shot on the one beside him, taking a step to the side to open up further targets if they continue to encroach. "Foolish."

"Enemy contact!" Duke shouts moving to find some cover behind an overturned, burnt husk of a tree. He lifts the carbine to his shoulder and squeezes the trigger three quick times in succession.

Two of the attackers are dropped with shots straight to the head, but his third shot flies wide.

Saanvi moves to the grou's flank so that she may select a target from the group that fans out about them without risk of shooting a comrade or putting comrades at risk of taking a blaster bolt whichc was meant for her. She lines a shot up along the scope, readying a shot even as she spreads out before finding a suitable target.

Bryce senses only moments before the arrival of the interceding individuals--Cultists, he bets. They were always cultists when it came to defending dirt and trees. "Just once I'd like to be welcomed with open arms," he remarks, coldly, before Anuesana's lightsaber is brought up in a fluid motion. Bryce begins at a run, before the crimson saber comes to life and is thrown outward towards one of the cultists, who somehow manages to duck. This brings a look of shock to Bryce's face and he stops in what was ostensibly his fun hero moment.

When Erisi sets one of their number on fire, the remaining cultists, and they are indeed cultists, here to take care of this dirt and these trees, dive into action. Their tools are not weapons, but they wield them with intense ferocity, a hatchet swinging so close to Erisi's face that it trims her bangs. The others are markedly less effective, and the Supreme Leader whirls into action, separating a head from its body, the bowl-like headgear flying upward like a cap popped off a mushroom. He splits another in half from top to bottom, and catches a third on the quillion of his saber, lifting the cultist bodily into the air before returning him to the earth with a smoking thud.

The sound of the clash draws attention, and before the last of the cultists can be felled, more are scampering in, these carrying a mishmash of tools, melee weapons, and blaster weapons.

Oran steps around the first swing of a cultist with ease that suggests he saw it coming, and then whips his own saber into a counter-attack, vivisecting the victim who tried. As more enemies seethe out of the woods, he cuts the legs out and the head off a second unfortunate, followed by a behind-the-back stab toward a third who thought he might sneak up from behind. The irontrees are watered with blood, slowly seeping out not-quite-cauterized wounds, and the end of all this death is still a long way away.

Erisi just saved money on a haircut. Eri is the slow burn type, so while the others shoot, swing and toss things, she is the type of woman to admire her handiwork before moving onto the next target. Or, once on her next target, the type to imagine the scenario before she goes ahead and lights things on fire. Will it smell weird? Look weird? What if they don't burn? What if only a piece does. Will they scream? Flick, her hand sweeps through the air and another cultist is set on fire, from the toes up this time, Erisi grinning a delighted sort of grin as her chest rises and falls with excitement. Darkness. Flames.

More appear and there is an audible sigh from KS-0218. "Really, one would think they would learn." She comes about quickly as her blaster lifts in a furious sweep towards the closest inbound to her position. She releases two shots, the first landing, the second missing but Karys manages to slam the third one to drop her target. The sound of her breathing inside her helmet is only for her ears but the adrenaline is starting to flare up as she spreads her feet wider to take her weight.

Standing up from his crouch, Duke marches forward with his blaster raised. "More movement on the perimeter," Duke informs everyone. They all know already, Duke.

Firing three more times, he plunks a duo of bolts into the chest of an incoming cultist, sending him spilling to the ground and kicking up a plume of silt.

Saanvi acknowledges <<Hostiles noted, maintaining combat protocol. Casualties report on this channel.>> lining up her next shot calmly even if this place is distinctly unsettling. Her sight settles on a target and she pulls the trigger.

Bryce takes a moment to consider the miss, but theres a flare of anger that suddenly appears. Instead of retrieving the saber from where it rest at the moment, Bryce regards the next nearest cultist and raises his hands. Electrical arcs spark briefly before darting forward to envelop one of the nearby cultists. Bryce's cold eye regards the thing hawkingly, watching it die.

The battle escalates as more of the cultists join the fray, with lightsabers chopping, fires breaking out, blaster bolts flying, and electricity crackling. A few cultists wield large blaster rifles that send powerful bolts of green plasma flying towards the invaders, striking Saanvi back for the shots she's landed against their kin.

Kylo continues cutting a swath through them, his unstable saber lashing out to divide bodies into their constituent parts, one swing sizzling past the cap of the cultist's helmet and cutting down an irontree instead, toppling to the forest floor with the sound of snapping branches. His eyes dart to the right as even more of the strangely-dressed defenders of the Fen come pouring towards them in apparently endless tide. "Keep going!" he yells to the others, stepping back from the swing of an axe.

"Not the medic, why do they always have to shoot the bloody medic?" Oran narrowly misses his next target, distracted by Saanvi taking a bolt, and then lets the saber whip back in anger to cut the warrior to pieces. Kylo's falling tree presents the next problem, and avoiding getting smashed by toppling ironwood has him on a defensive miss against the next warrior target.

"Because it's what I'd do." Eri states out to Oran, half-turning on her right foot, robes swooshing around all cinematically as she does so, "Because it's smart." Not that she's linking the two, just that she'd gladly murder and that it happens to be the smart thing to do. FWOOSH. Now if only Eri could get faster at the hand wizardry. Her target is set on fire again, rippling out from the middle to either end of the body as this one screams, a little more time given to do so by Eri. She's also sweet. She crouch-dodges to avoid getting hit, flinching this way and that while trying to focus on the next one.

Keep going. Not that there really was much of a choice. Karys is quick to fire off three more shots into the far more menacing warriors and only one sticks. She hisses through her teeth and then clicks her tongue to the roof of her mouth as she holds up her other weapon, though she notes the powercell is low and curses below her breath. "Not the time.." she says and then steps in closer to the others, trying to give herself room to reload without getting struck. As fire erupts again, KS-0218 lets out a sound of grateful relief.

"Pressing forward," Duke informs everyone as he continues his slow march toward the enemy. BLITZKRIEG. His carbine's barrel whips toward a new target and does enough damage to slow him down before it's lined up with a second, blasting a chunk out of him.

Duke slides behind cover and checks the charge on his rifle.

"Need a reload."

Saanvi swings her barrel and pulls the trigger and almost simultaniously she's hit with an a pained grunt as she's given a solid but if not serious wound. She kneels then to brace the butt of her rifle <<Medic seeking cover for treatment.>> She does not lower her rifle just yet.

Sufficiently pleased with how easily the cultist's life escaped its shell, Bryce seems to forget the wayward lightsaber--Especially as blaster fire starts coming back their way. Anuesana's saber aside, it is Bryce's own lightsaber that's brought into hand. A wayward blaster shot is directed into the ground, before Bryce dart's forward with a quick rising-to-guard attack, followed by a horizontal rotating-hand strike that resets at the raised guard position.

The fighting is brutal. Bodies strew the forest floor, the thick cloth wrappings the cultists wear doing little to stop the hell unleashed on them by the invading might of the First Order. Did it have to be this way? Could they have made some sort of deal? A green bolt passes so close to Erisi that it singes her sleeve. Warriors shoot and swing, weapons clashing against the irontrees, into the dirt, throwing particles into the air, making it hard to see.

Kylo slashes out at the nearest warrior, chopping his rifle in half, and then again, skewering the bulky body on his saber, ducking under the swing of a cleaver as he pulls the weapon out and brings it to bear on his next attacker, stumbling back away as the smoking corpse falls, breathing hard.

Oran always starts these things out looking so clean and tidy, and ends them looking like a cat that got wet, saw the fires of hell itself, and is equally mad about both things. He's well on his way there now, sweaty and blood spattered, trying to chase down a wily warrior who just refuses to get chopped up into little saberized bits. The cultist evades him every swing, far more nimble than the poor hedge-clipper wielding husbandrymen and foresters who started off this project.

Erisi is so slow. So slow. Too slow. Enough that she's attacked from the right as she's looking to the left, distracted by trying to figure out her next target. It's enough of a shock to feel something in her hip, blade going by and through her robes into her flesh. The air is dark, the sweat is running down her face making things worse, but the pinprick of pain that begins sets her off and she lets out a scream, swinging around and slapping out her hand to set the one who came in for the attack on fire. She doesn't touch the figure, fingertips a whispers touch away as she continues to scream like an idiotic banshee. Everything's gotta burn now. EVERYTHING.

Going to one knee, Karys ejects her powercell with a hiss of her blaster and it tumbles across the ground. She clips the new one in as shots are taken and one that wizzes by her misses by enough to cause her no concern. She grits her teeth and rises back to her feet to prepare to unload once more. "More?" She says as her pistol whips up to take two pot shots at the nearest warrior that appears to b having a some trouble. As he goes down amidst the rest of the carnage she turns her head to glances Erisi and her vocal acrobatics.

"More movement!" Duke calls out, sliding his powerpack out and whipping it off to the side before pulling another from his belt and slotting into place. Poking out of cover, Duke lifts his rifle again and fires, catching one of the new arrivals in the belly.

"Saanvi, en route to your position, hold tight," he says, stepping out of cover and ducking as the cultists continue firing.

Saanvi pauses for just a fraction of a second, head canting as she notes the fresh batch of hostiles but she wastes no more time than that before declining to join her peers in attacking and instead going through her rapid draw whipping out medical supplies to tend to her own injury and as soon as she's addressed it as best as she can she makes use of a new addition to her kit-an automatic duct-tape dispensor to cover the breach in her armor and hold the dressing tight.

Then, there they were. Guardians. The Alazmec warrior singing beside him and slumping downward, dead, Bryce is left to consider the warriors for a moment. His hawkish eyes analyze them for only a split second before Bryce darts forward, the speed of his movements enhanced by his connection to the force. The raised guard falls to the first, dropping low through the Guardian Duke had already begun to bloody. The lowering strike rolls in a low arc as Bryce continues forward, drawing it upward to slash through a second guardian. The fluid strikes leave him once again in a raised forward guard, ready for the next one.

The forest has become a warzone. Pockmarks mar the earth between the corpses, troughs from lightsabers dragged through it, irontrees scorched, bent over, burnt stumps still glowing. Despite their numbers, the cultists are waning, and no more when one falls does another arise to take his place. Lady Corvax's tears soak the dirt, falling from the wounds of her worshippers.

Puffing like a bellows, Kylo turns to face the last of the Alazmec warriors, sidestepping a blade as he pivots behind its wielder to cut him down, grabbing up the weapon and flinging it across the the grove to skewer the forester harassing Erisi. Turning his saber in a deadly wheel, he chops through weapon, limbs, and body as a cultist flings itself on him, trying to drag him to the ground, but the saber wards the thing off and leaves him unsteady but upright.

A lot can be said of this or that saber form and style; Oran fights like he was taught by Kylo. Or rather, like he was taught by Kylo but had to adapt it to being a much smaller person; raw force and fury tempered by enough speed and precision not to get smashed like the little insect he is. Wounded cultists find their end at his saber when Oran ducks under a half-fallen ironwood tree they couldn't do the same for... yeah, where is your god now, tall people?! And following that, one more vicious slash that sprays blood all over his formerly clean self, the corpse falling an unexpected forward to squash him temporarily against a close copse of tree-trunks. Hopefully more aren't arriving.

Erisi's hands are on her knees, hip aching from the small wound she got, chest rising and falling hard. Her head is dipped forwards, woman listening. Head cocks back as she looks up, then from side to side, "Please say that's it." A pause as she gingerly pushes up, giving her hips a small wag from side to side, feeling how deep the damage goes, sweat beading down her face and into her already hot robes, "If not ..I just need like ...two minutes." A deep sniff, Eri closing her eyes, hands planting to her hips. And she waits. Taking in air.

"To think," Karys growls out after a warrior catches her off-guard and ends up downing her a moment, "I thought I might get out of this unscathed.." she hisses. Getting back to her feet she watches as the warrior is cut down by Oran, the saber a stark light reflected off her armor before he moves on. She walks forward and kicks at the figure, pushing it with her boot as she lifts her head to look at the massacre around them. The smell of burned flesh starts to fill her nostrils even through he helmet.

Keeping his rifle leveled, but seemingly out of direct conflict, Private DK-4077 begins a sweep of the downed enemies, kicking at them and shooting any that show signs of life.

And if you think he's not walking out of here with one of those cool rice hats, you're living in a fantasy world, pal.

"Do you require hydration, Knight Erisi?" Duke asks, extending a canteen to the woman, face as flat and emotionless as always.

Saanvi hefts up her rifle and stands, barrell sweeping her surroundings before she catches sight and sound of Karys then the shotgun's safety is engaged and she slings it across her shoulder to lope towards Karys to kneel beside Karys.

With the last of the cultists dead and cooling on the ground, Kylo takes a deep breath, smearing at his face with a gloved hand to wipe away the sweat and only really succeeding in smearing the soot and ash around. The lightsaber in his hand deactivates, slamming back into the hilt with a shudder.

At the far end of the grove, it stands undisturbed; a stone plinth, marked with a distinct emblem, a stylized blaze. He strides towards it, and with a shove, sends the heavy stone lid sliding off to thump to the forest floor. Carefully, earnestly, he prises the object inside from its setting, and holds it aloft; a strange, arcane pyramid shape, similar to the holocrons they've encountered before, but more primitive, housing a cloudy red inclusion in its depths.

His brow furrows deeply as he considers it, glancing towards Oran. "Now you know what I needed." The wayfinder is tucked close to his body, the drape of his cloak obscuring it from view. "Back to the ship. There's something I have to do." Without further ado, he sets off towards the Shadow, his prize in hand, stepping over the bodies of the fallen.