Log:Sith Empire: Deep Worlds Hereafter

Sith Empire: Deep Worlds Hereafter

OOC Date: March 16, 2022
Location: Korriban
Participants: Sith Empire: Tamsin Cas, Xavier Harcourt, Rilee, Tarq Najjic, and Darth Ferren

The gray angular planes of the shuttle cut through the air above Korriban as the Sith Empire's emissaries circle lower. There is no attendant in the pilot's seat; Darth Ferren himself guides the ship down towards the surface. Out of the viewport, the landscape is arid and barren, a hostile terrain where rusty sand and rock dominates the entire field of view. The ship swings in low under his control, hovering in an empty space as the landing gear deploy and the wings fold above its head.

When Ferren descends the ramp, it's with a thick wrap of black fabric riding above his breastplate, fit to catch the sand from his face without clinging to it. He steps out onto the windswept flat, his cape catching a breeze as he heads towards them: the monumental tombs carved into the mountains before them. "The problem with history is that it seldom sees fit to stay in the past," Ferren remarks dryly, for how could it be other in this climate? "My master has sent us here to keep it there."

Tamsin, who had remained in the rear of the shuttle as they had departed the larger destroyer, read to herself as she waited, scrolling text flickering across the 'screens' of her goggles. Despite the dark robes, and the helm set on the seat beside her (her lap, as it always was, was taken up by her medical pack), she looked not so different from any academic or perhaps a post doctoral student refreshing themselves before a big examination. When she felt the shuttle touch down, the goggles were removed and stored safely away, and the helm slipped onto her head, activating the seal that would, hopefully, keep the outside outside. As Ferren passed and made his way down the ramp, Tamsin rose to follow him, "Are we here to keep something from getting in, or from getting out?"

As they fly towards the birthplace of the race known as Sith and the planet that that the culture of Sith violently adopted for their own. Now, whatever it was to whoever was left, it's a red-stained dust bowl. The kind that stubbornly gets around Xavier's drawn-up hood and clings to every crack and crease in his face.

Standing with the crew, he looks up at the abandoned monuments in front of them with a disapproving frown. "I ever tell you I know Sith?" He says to no one and everyone simultaneously. Oblivion, he could go for a cigarette or three right now. "And here I thought it wouldn't come up again. How naive of me, mmm?" Turning his head towards those speaking, the man gives a sideways smirk. "If we're keeping something in, I think we'd be razing it from orbit."

Rilee has been ready for this assignment ever since the order was given. She declined drinks on Nar Shadda with other soldiers at least five times so that she could put in extra training. As far as she is concerned, this is the most important mission she has ever been given, to even be allowed to set foot on Korriban at all, not to mention accompanying Darth Ferren himself. Rilee gazes out into the wastes, rifle strapped behind her, pistol on her left side. The soldier is ready should anything untoward happen. For now though she keeps silent watch for any manner of monstrous, hungry thing.

Tarq Najjic has been more taciturn these last few weeks, around for little save exercise and study with the holocrons. On the shuttle ride down, he sits near Tamsin in the rear of the shuttle, eyes half-closed. When they've landed he rises slowly to his feet and trails Ferren and the other Councilors and the Mark down the ramp, tugging a dark cloth across his lower face like a mask, filter against the dust and sand. Only his green eyes and a trace of his carefully-mussed brown hair are visible underneath his hood, which he is, for once, wearing: his cape having been traded out for a true cloak.

After surveying the wasteland and stepping after Ferren towards the tombs across the waste, he breaks his silence: "Nothing is ever truly gone. It merely waits."

After a moment's pause, he tilts his head to the side, eyeing Ferren as they walk. "What does your master fear is done waiting?"

"Korriban is an old Sith world, in all the senses those three words can hold," Ferren explains as he walks on. "Some say that the Sith species evolved here, if they ever existed at all." Narrowed eyes run appraisingly up one of the massive statues the group is approaching, set outside a sealed stone door, its features largely worn away but no less intimidating for its facelessness. "I suppose someone must have lived to carve these tombs."

Their pathway leads upward, an uneven ruddy ramp that, in times past, may have been a stairway, but now little more than an irregularly undulating hill. "For a thousand years, the Sith have kept the rule of two. Always two, a master and an apprentice." Reaching into his robes, he withdraws a small tetrahedron of bronzy metal and deep red crystalline glass. "You learn from these, yes? The distilled wisdom of Sith past. Sith who followed the rule of two." The gloved hand gestures almost casually with the prized item at the expanse before them, the Valley of the Dark Lords. "Where has it gotten them? The Valley of the /Dead/ Lords lies still, the only signs of life those beasts bred here knawing on the bones of Sith past. This is what we have come to shore up the walls of division betwixt the past and our present. The rule of two."

"Short sighted," was Tamsin's casual reply to Xavier's comment. "A resource, even a dangerous one, destroyed, rather than harnessed, in the now, means a resource which, in the future, can't be utilized and turned to serve your needs." Tamsin did not slow her pace, keeping close enough to Ferren that she could listen to the information he imparted as she moved closer to the tombs. The holocron she glanced at, but only in passing. It was impossible to tell to whom the holocron belonged. "Housekeeping, then."

Xavier turns his head and spits. Whether it be for the topic discussed or the sand in his mouth it unclear but it is precisely timed regardless. "It served little purpose then. I see no value in it now," he answers back to Tamsin. "Just another relic for a failed empire. Several failed empires." As they walk along, he points towards Ferren in agreement. "The rule of two is as antiquated as Palpatine's ghosst haunting the present like an etheral boogeyman. Even the Order--" he refrains from spitting again and puts on the strip of cloth to protect his nose and mouth instead "--cannot let go of their own failed traditions. I trust, then, your Master has opted to do away with this practice, as well?"

Rilee mentally thanks her security clearance as she cannot avoid hearing the discussion between the councilors. So far so good, her eyes continue to scan the horizons from behind her iconic helmet. She has no opinion on Sith matters, it's simply her job to kill when told to, and that is all she is here for.

The ramp is easily ascended and when the tetrahedron is produced, her eyes only rest on it for a moment, but to her it is altogether mysterious, and she doesn't understand what is said about it.

"Served its purpose, yes? Sith endured wars, avoided best efforts at suicide." Tarq is not well read, but you hear a holocron mention a topic often enough, it starts to stick. He ignores the statue. He's paying less attention to his eyes than the broader, disturbing sense of their surroundings in the Force. Everything is just off. Tainted.

"But what lets one - survive - does not help one /thrive/." He trudges up the hill. "Korriban. Poetic place to bury those you do not bring with you." This could be a way of eliminating them to revive the Rule, after all.

Sith gonna Sith.

"My master is old and wise. He has seen the weakness of this rule played to the breaking point. Only through his intervention do the Sith live on at all." Darth Ferren explains succintly. The path leads upward still, a long climb providing plenty of time for conversation. "It is time to leave such things that hinder us behind. It sounds poetic, I will grant. Master and apprentice, carefully guarding the lust for power and allowing it to fester until, finally, the apprentice overthrows the master and takes their place."

He pauses, glancing at the others. "Not terribly practical, though, is it. Suppose we both kill each other in the fight. That's the whole Sith over with, or at least our vein of it, and that's the one we care about." Xavier mentions Palpatine, and earns a knowing nod. "Scheming, calculating. These can be useful traits, but it makes an institution out of what comes naturally anyway."

Carrying on, Ferren points towards a sealed entrance ahead, mammoth in size. Two statues, carved from the same rock as everything else, loom on either side of the door. The way the entrance is couched in the rock shields it from the wind, and the features carved are still visible, stolid stone faces staring down. Inscriptions, both imagery and some aggressive, archaic script, are set deep into the rock.

"This feels like the place," he announces, looking up at the door and the statues. "Try to find some way in, or at least confirmation before we spend more time breaking through."

"I question the truthfulness of such an idea as the rule of two as it applied to the Sith of the most recent era. While there may have been only a single Master and Apprentice, there were others who were cultivated who had force ability, even if they were never permitted to rise to the level of calling themselves a true Lord of the Sith." Of course, no one amongst these here gathered, except of course Ferren, could name themselves such a thing now. Once they had arrived at the tomb, Tamsin nodded, stepping away from the group as she began a long ranging towards the entrance, reaching out to set a hand on the stone that formed the door. She stood still, and silent, as she reached out into that place that she could feel, but would never be able to articulate. "It has been lifetimes since this door opened to give entry to the to the supplicants who came here. It remembers best the day this tomb was sealed. A sea of figures with their armed raised to the sky, a wave of figures on their knees standing witness to the moment."

Sometimes it pays to have a crabby, old man in your war party. Xavier looks up at the large doors, dark brown eyes squinting more at the script and less at the sand trying to carve its initials in his corneas. A few more steps within takes him into the inset that protects him and the entrance from the wind and sand, a gloved hand exiting from the black folds of his cloak.

The tips of his fingers trail along the ancient script, reading aloud in a hissing, clipped language he often uses subconsciously for cursing. "pya us ...chwit ist pliaurl vrogspyam...osp pliaurl pya ilshwro vrouz scriglokro. osp... kusk twift ousk. vrimbyag thrirp thriqo..."

Some of the words he tracks over are completely worn off, causing him to pause curiously and try to fill in the blanks as he reads it again, this time in Basic. The Final --I'm assuming 'resting'-- place of Dark... Lord? of the Sith Darth Bane. Something at your peril. These halls are... argh. I assume that last word isn't pleasant. Now he steps back and glances to Tamsin. Lifetimes would be correct if this is where Bane was laid to--- decay. No rest for the wicked.

Where Tamsin reaches a hand out to touch the door and Xavier reads the inscription, Tarq steps up to run his fingertips along some of the inscription and some of the cracks. "Darth Bane himself? He who began the Rule - surely the most paranoid." He traces out the edge of the door and presses on a point a few feet to the left. He puts his ear up against the rock and raps hard on the stone of the door. His lips twist and he wiggles his head back and forth, stepping back and putting his fists on his hips as he stares up.

"Tarq Najjic sees and feels no traps. Surprising, really." He takes another step to give himself a better view. "Did not find opening mechanism, either, but we have seen its like before. Perhaps something recessed. Or something unseen, reachable only by Force. Guesses only."

Rilee began to look around as soon as the others started. Lacking Force sensitivity, or any knowledge of whatever language is etched into the stone, the soldier is content to only run her eyes over the area a few times. While she doesn't have any 'aha' moments, it's still a very interesting place. Darth Bane is mentioned, a Sith she hasn't heard of.

Ignorant of how absolutely profound this discovery is, she continues to keep watch, and is glad that she wasn't assigned to this mission for her education.

"The very same," Darth Ferren confirms as to Bane's identity, staring grimly at the door marked with the script Xavier has just read. "The largest in the valley, my master said. And the last." That explains how he was able to guess which one it was, evidently. He gestures up at the door. "Whatever warning written is not worse than the displeasure we will face if we return to my master without completing his mission. We must enter."

Tarq and Tamsin's stories sit in his brainpan for a moment, stewing and mingling. "The raised arms... Perhaps that was how the doors were closed? If closed, they can be opened." It's less a statement of logic and more a declaration of will. "The inhabitants of this planet were strong in the Force. You can feel that still." And something else, something tainted, just as the others sensitive to such things have been noticing since their arrival. Something tainted, corrupt. More sinister by far than the anger they so often wield.

"If there was a physical lock, Tarq would have found it." Trust Tamsin to trust in Tarq Najjic's thievish ways. "This is a place where the force was primary and dominant. Perhaps only the force can open it. Anything more mundane might have seemed far too...banal." Tamsin would make the attempt regardless. "If I fail or if I succeed, perhaps it will wake the darkness we can all feel within and it will come to us." She stepped away from the door, hands idle at her sides as she focused on tugging on the entry by force of will alone.

'These halls are ---' It's that last, eon-erased word that is plaguing Xavier now as they collectively ponder a way in. Whatever that word is, it spells trouble for them. More trouble than upsetting the Emperor in Shadows? Apparently. Not that he has much choice in the matter but to press on. And if Xavier is being completely honest with himself, he's curious to see what the Force does to a several-centuries-old corpse of a Dark Lord.

Tamsin speaks her thoughts, gaining an agreeable nod from Xavier. "Can't sully their hands if they can get the Force to do it, mmm? Then again, I wonder if there's some kind ... means of sealing this rather than simply closing it." A few steps further back puts him with his comrades, raising his hand as he looks to Rilee. "There is an uneasiness here. Be on your guard."

Then words fall silent and Xavier focuses himself to grasping the tendrils of the Force and pushing against the door.

Rilee has enough training not to flinch when Darth Ferren reminds everyone of the danger that his master's disapproval represents. But suddenly the planet doesn't seem so frightening anymore. Indeed when Xavier raises the 'alert level', she is ready to face -anything- in that tomb, at least in theory.

There are worse fates than failing here. She salutes with a fist to her chest in recognition, "Yes m'lord!" Weapon now at the ready just in case.

While the other two attempt to push the door open by sheer will, Tarq takes a few more steps back, looking up first at the statue on the left, then the one on the right, fists still at his hips. He raises his hand. "Maybe is simple ritual - in architecture" His fingers flex, as he reaches out, eyes closing to slits. His mind takes grip on the arms of the statue on the right, attempting to pull them up into the gesture Tamsin described, but is somewhat distracted by that miasma in the Force, like an odor just barely seeping out.

The imposing stone door with its words of probable warning and its significant owner was perhaps never intended to open again after it was sealed. Tombs aren't meant for tourism. But when Tamsin and Xavier raise their arms and wills against it, Darth Ferren joins them, exerting his own connection to the Force and pressing the door to bend to his wishes.

The door... pushes back, in a way, something that inanimate objects shouldn't be able to /do/. It's not the same sense as a real, living, Force-wielding person gives, but in a palpable, unnatural, /unclean/ sense, they can feel it resisting them.

Then Tarq attempts to raise the statue's arms.

Like the door, this was never meant to occur to this statue. The arms aren't jointed, no secret mechanism has been discovered, and when he pulls the arms upward, the whole statue is tugged off-balance. It teeters for a moment on the brink, a wobbling chess-piece with a high center of balance, and crashes against the door, dislodging a cloud of dust and cracking the weathered door with a sound like thunder.

Immediately the pressure of the other Force users' intention caves the portal further in, and as the chunks of rock lie there in the settling motes of dust suspended in the newly-shed light, Ferren straightens up, satisified. "No one will ever know we were here," he remarks sardonically, with an arched brow as he strides inside.

The chamber within is dark. A white band of light with a red halo glow cast around it springs to life in his hand, casting a meager illumination that does not reach the walls.

Rilee has her rifle trained on the entrance as the statue comes crashing down. She is expecting a horde of beasts to come running towards the noise it caused at best, at worst something being awakened from inside the tomb, and either way this is likely not going to be a peaceful 'touch and go' expedition.

Lightsabers are ignited around her, which only confirms her instinct, but the fate that awaits them in failure is far more intimidating than anything else this planet has to offer. There is no going back now.

The door isn't just closed. It's not just a heavy thing to lift. It is legitimately pushing back. To the point that Xavier feels his hand being repelled as it trying to force two similar ends of a magnet together. Knees bend, boots brace against the sandstone, and Xavier is physically leaning into this invisible wall they've hit. It'd be an extremely absurd performance art where it not for the ominous, unknown power behind the resistance.

All that comes to a crumbling end when Tarq's efforts merit the results they needed. Statue meets door and, in a world of practical outcomes, the door lost. "Do be fair, we did try to knock and no one answered," is the answer to Ferren's quip as they move within.

Opting to keep close to Rilee as a bit of a buffer for -- whatever -- is waiting for them, Xavier ignites his stun saber to emit a glowing white light in the darkness, taking in the tomb with a grunt. "When I finally die, just launch me into a sun. I don't care which one."

Tamsin, whose attention shifted from the door ahead which held possibly danger, to the falling statue which held probably danger, stepped aside as the statue tipped forward, cracking the slab open and allowing them entry inside. "If he truly is dead and laid to rest, I doubt, very much he'll care we destroyed the door. The tomb was moldering. A poor display of pride in ones house." Nothing for it but to move forward." And so Tamsin would, her eyes adjusting to allow her to pick her way further into the tomb and past the immediate rubble. "I sense no immediate danger, but that has never stopped the sith before."

Tarq winces when the statue comes down. It doesn't hit anyone, thankfully. He follows the others in, activating his lightsaber as he goes to provide its malevolent light in this malevolent place. "Tried outside the box thinking, but broke box." It's a short apology, solution to the Gordian knot though it was.

He raises it high over his head. "Is it whole planet that fights us? Legacy of malice? Or is there something /here/ - here, in particular?"

The chamber is gradually lit by the cumulative addition of the lightsabers. The walls are far back away from the core group, wider even than the entry door. This massive antechamber of sorts is, for the most part, empty, and the pool of blinding sunlight streaming through the cracked portal makes it difficult to see into the gloaming. The further they proceed away from natural light, the more they're able to make out shapes and color in the shadows.

"It's hard to say," Darth Ferren answers Tarq, his voice quieter in the quiet, ears straining against the silence. "It could be either. I don't think it is us in particular. I think it would be thus for anyone. But it's concentrated here, in this tomb. We are not welcome."

As they near the opposite wall from the entrance, the gathered light of their weapons reveals in flickering red glow a tiled mosaic, picked out in fine detail and many colors tinted a pervasive red. It depicts a figure dressed in armor and a stylized helmet with masses in black and red spread out before him like grains of sand before the ocean. In his hand he holds a plain cylinder, and the other is raised high overhead, an empty slot hollow in the open palm.

"One would hope that the artifact that fits in that slot," Tamsin offered as she studied the mosaic before she began to step away, clearly trying to get the lay of the land, "Is not the one that sat in the Knights' library." She was careful, one might note, not to mention where the holocron actually was, "If so, then we will simply have to locate something else of import that would render this place inert." Tamsin did not go so far, as the antechamber was large, but not so massive that one could lose themselves. She did call back as she walked, "Another puzzle--" And then Tamsin turned, looking back at Ferren, "And you had the key all along." If only Tamsin had not been wearing a mask, it would have been possible to see the faint smile that curled her lips.

Venturing cautiously in further, Xavier keeps his saber up and his senses listening, but this place is talking from all sides without using words. It doesn't need to. The ominous cloud of 'get out' is all around them. The mosaic is impossible to miss even with Xavier trying his damnest not to give it the satisfaction of his attention. But he is drawn to it all the same. Alluring is the dark forces even when they are literally attempting to shove one out the other way.

He tilts his head to the side, regarding the triangle-shaped cavity. The uneasiness grows and -- after switching his saber from the right hand to the left -- pulls out a cigarette to hold between his lips. A few seconds later, a pale yellow light joins the other sources for a brief moment before snapping closed again and he inhales something other than sand and dust. "Is that Bane's holocron you've brought with us, Ferren?"

Then he shakes his head. "This place hasn't been opened since it was sealed. If that--" he points to the indentation with his smoke-wileding fingers "--is meant to house it, one would have to question why make a key at all. And if we'd get it back if put there."

Rilee suddenly remembers.. she was taught the names of some Sith Lords as a child, as were most denizens of Exegol. It suddenly sinks in. Darth Bane, who effectively founded the Sith as they had been for a thousand years. Her eyes widen inside of her helmet and it is then that the sheer power of this place begins to weigh on her mind, her soul. It begins to chip away at her military bearing and everything that defines her as a warrior.

Rilee becomes afraid. It's not a fear of death, or pain, or anything else that could be described as mundane. It's an unknown fear, something she has very little comprehension of. She can't even get angry at "it" because she doesn't know what "it" is to begin with. Still she continues on with the others, she isn't a coward. Most beings in the galaxy would be justified in fleeing but she isn't "most."

"Mausoleums are egotistical. Would not put everything here if did not want others to /want in/. Imagine, wanting people to seek your approval in one thousand years." Tarq tips his head towards the slot - apparently holocron-sized. "Is ultimate satisfaction for narcissist, yes? For us to be here at all, to have hunted down his teachings, to seek what - he - sealed away."

"Perhaps simply to punish those who outlive you, who defy you." He stands a few feet from the 'slot.' "Will it push - back - again?"

"It's not as if we have a choice," Darth Ferren replies simply to Xavier and Tamsin's questions and suggestions, reaching back into his robe to withdraw the holocron again. He raises it aloft, not unlike the mosaic, and then an unseen hand lifts it from his palm to the slot in Darth Bane's where the tetrahedron's tip slides into the empty space and settles flush with the wall, a perfect fit.

A dial inscribed on the base of the holocron turns, and something inside the wall clicks.

The entire mosiac-wall grinds back an inch, and the panel where the figure of Darth Bane (for whom else could it be) is displayed recedes into the floor. Ferren waits and watches, as if expecting something else to happen, but when no blades of death appear and no boulders fall from the ceiling, he glances to the others, hefts the saber in his hand, and steps wordlessly into the dark passageway revealed beyond.