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Yesterday, 06:00 PM
(This post was last modified: Yesterday, 06:13 PM by Krassus Horuset.)
>> [ACCESSING LOCAL DATASTORE...]
>> [ENTRY IDENTIFIER: X7-LAMBENT//PERSONAL_DEVICE-LOCKED]
>> [ENCRYPTION LEVEL: MAXIMUM — PHYSICAL DECRYPTION REQUIRED]
>> [AUTHOR: UNKNOWN]
>> [FILE STATUS: UNSHARED — PRIVATE STORAGE ONLY]
>> [BEGIN PERSONAL ENTRY // EST. DATE: CLASSIFIED]
If you are reading this... I am likely dead.
"High Treason" — that will have been the charge read aloud as I was marched before the firing squad. Which makes you either a fellow True Imperial Patriot... or a witless pawn of the Sith, trying to answer the same question I could never silence:
Why?
Why betray the Empire?
I will tell you why.
For the people of the Empire.
For the people of the Republic.
For the continuation of life in a galaxy that has lost its mind.
My name is [REDACTED://ERROR_404]. Ziost-born. [REDACTED://ERROR_404] in the Imperial Military.
This is my story.
When I was born, the Empire stood at the height of its power. Its war machine cut a path of destruction across the galaxy. Worlds razed, fleets shattered, rivers of blood left in its thread. All of it feeding the ambitions of the Dark Council and our illusive Emperor. I remember watching the Sacking of Coruscant unfold live on my father’s holofeed at our Ziost estate.
I remember being *angry* when Darth Angral plunged his blade into Chancellor Berooken. Not for the Mon Calamari’s death… but because I feared the Republic would fall before I could enlist.
That was my dream.
My father; decorated, brilliant. Has always been a master of logistics, battlefield calculus and military command. I wanted to follow in his footsteps. To serve. To earn my name beneath the legacy of Odile Vaiken. So when the time came, I didn’t wait for the draft. I volunteered. Ziost Officer Academy.
Back when I believed the Empire stood for something.
Order. Power. Strength. Unity.
Vengeance.
But it was a lie. All of it.
My father’s political ascent saw him posted to Dromund Kaas. As his eldest son, I was transferred with him; reassigned to the Kaas City Officer Academy. A prestigious position. My mother remained behind at the Ziost estate to care for my baby sister. My father believed hyperspace might impact her fragile health.
And so, from far away, I bore witness to the death of my homeworld. The beginning of the End.
At first, just rumors. Then brief, heavily censored broadcasts. And then silence. Ziost had gone dark.
Months passed before I returned. My father brought me with him to the dead world, to see what had transpired, if anything could be salvaged from our estate. Myself with the faint hope of finding my mother and sister.
But I felt it as soon as we landed in that... That Grave.
I am no Force-sensitive by any stretch of the imagination, but it was as clear to me as anything. It felt.. *Wrong.*
Not in the way warzones are wrong. But fundamentally. Existentially. The air was still, sterile, hollow. Like walking into a medical facility. As if the Emperor's sundering had rendered it devoid of all life and microbes.
The ground, the very soil dark and ashen, stripped bare robbed of its nutrients.
The winds howled like mourners across the broken cities. Everything was dust. Ash. The wind blowing clouds of this ashy gray substance about in waves. Layers of it everywhere
Even the akk dog cages at our estate were filled with it. A fine, flakey coat... the texture of dead skin.
That’s all that remained.
We accessed the estate’s holologs. My father silent. Stone-faced.
We watched it unfold.
It began with distant blaster fire. Then a triggered motion sensor in my sister’s room. Then... *her*. My mother. Shrouded in that crimson miasma of the Emperor’s will. She moved like a marionett. Slow, stiff, entranced. A puppet on strings.
I watched, helpless, as she picked up my sister from her crib. Looked at her.. Head tilted, like an animal studying something it couldn’t understand.
Then she swung her.
Her tiny body struck the nursery wall. Blood everywhere. My mother just... stood there. Watching. And then she walked, slow and deliberate, down the estate halls.
She turned. Walked the halls toward the barracks.
There... Hagran. Kreeg. Loyal soldiers. Loyal to the Empire, to my Father. Men I had known since I was a child, men I had looked up to since I could walk. They gunned her down without hesitation. Cold. Empty. My mother's life cut short by the same blasters they'd once trained me to use as a child. They stepped over her corpse and marched into the chaos. Mindless. Enslaved by that same dark will. I never saw them again. Only the ash remained.
They were likely unmade hours later when the Emperor’s hunger reached them.
The holofeed caught the wave; that monstrous tide of energy that rolled across Ziost, consuming everything. My mother. My sister. Hagran and Kreeg. Life itself. All reduced to dust.
My father said nothing. He stared into the screen, unmoving. A man with an iron heart indeed.
But I? I only had one question... Why?
Why would the Emperor do this? To his own people? *Loyal* people? Loyal citizens that had *Bled* For him.
He built this Empire. Forged it in his vision for over a millenium, countless Imperial recruits, myself included, swearing oaths of undying loyalty to him and his caus.
So why?
How I wished I had the answer then...
Now, I wish I had never found it.
The truth? The Empire was never a righteous war machine. Never the avenging storm it claimed to be. It was a ritual. A weapon. A suicide pact. A galaxy-wide bloodletting meant to feed a mad god. A suicide scatter-gun held in the mouth of the galaxy, finger on the trigger, held by a maniac.
We were never meant to win. We were meant to die. Ziost was never an exception. It was the template.
This 'Great' Galactic War we have persued for a millenium? Ritualistic slaughter to prime the galaxy for annihilation.
But what did the Sith do when they learned this? When they realized the truth? That everything the Empire was, that everything we had built towards over the long millennia since the fall of Naga Sadow was a lie? A ritualistic suicide pact with a madman?
*Nothing.*
No, worse than nothing.
Like the child of abusive parents, they continued the abuse, even in the Emperor's absence. They continue to wage the War, they continue its meaningless bloodshed. Dragging civilization further into the abyss. They gleefully continue to drag the scalpel of death across the wrist of galactic civilization, and laugh as the lifeblood of trillions of beings continues to be spille across the stars.
And for what? All in the name of vengeance over the Jedi? Hatred of the Republic? Blood purity of the Sith?
Madness! Even without the Emperor, they *Persist*! And for what?
It does not take a military genius to see that the War is lost. The Empire was never meant to win this war... It can't. Only the delusional can still believe in an ultimate Imperial victory to this conflict.
And yet the Sith continue to lead us all to the slaughter. Blinded by their hatred, their lust for revenge, their xenophobia, their traditions. Willingly sacrificing us all on the altar of their ambitions in their names. Unwilling to see the truth... Or perhaps they do see it and simply do not care.
Maybe the Emperor wasn't an outlier. Maybe he was what all Sith truly are. Uncaring. Self-obsessed. Insane.
Monsters.
They would drown the entire galaxy in a sea of blood for their ambitions. Burn it all to cinders to hide from their crippling fear of Death, Defeat, the Loss of their *Power.* And we would be the kindling.
I have heard that the Emperor is truly gone now. Finally defeated.
But I swear this: if even a shadow of his presence still drifts in the void, he is laughing. Laughing at us. At the Sith. At his pawns as they continue to bring death t o the galaxy even in his absence, gleefully spreading the disease of war across the stars. Spreading the rot. The end of all things.
The Empire will fall. Of that I am certain.
It cannot be saved, for the Sith will not let it be saved. They will wage this war for ever if we let them. They would sooner see Dromund Kaas burn as Ziost did rather than surrender their suicidal, destructive quest to destroy the Jedi.
And they would all drag us down with them. They would put every man, woman and child of the Empire between the advancing armies of the Republic and themselves before this war is over. If they have their way our people will cease to exist.
Because in the end they see no difference between us, the enemy or their slaves. We are all meaningless to them. Fuel for their ambitions... Our lives insignificant, our deaths more so.
But we do not have to be their pawns. We do not have to sign another suicide pact with the Sith order after we just barely escaped the one with Emperor Vitiate. We can choose,
Choose peace.
Imperial and Republic forces fought side by side to stop to the Emperor, to stop Zakuul. I saw it. We can live together. But not while the Sith Rule.
They must be cast down. Their temples razed. Their institutions dismantled. Their Empire broken.
Because make no mistake:
This is their Empire. Not ours.
We are naught but Serfs to them. Fodder.
Meat.
The military, our civil structures. They only serve those who bow. Those who align with Sith interests. The interests of another Apathetic Monarch and his Dark Council of maniacs. The interests of madness.
The Empire stands for nothing now but blood. Death. The end of all things. And the Imperial Military? It has become the willing blade of the Sith. A blade at the throat of not only the peoples of the Republic, but those of the Empire. The throat of life itself.
I will do what I must to see our people freed from this terror. The terror of the Sith. And it pains me that the Military must come down with them. For there are good people in Uniform. I know that. I know them. I fought with them. But I know that the will of good people will not be enough to stop this terrible thing we have set in motion.
I know what must be done. Even if it damns me.
Contact has been made. With the Convor. With the Republic SIS.
The die is cast.
If the Force offers an afterlife, I will answer for what comes next.
But the war must end.
[ENTRY TERMINATED — SIGNAL CLOSED]
[LAST ACCESS DATE: UNKNOWN]
>> [ENTRY IDENTIFIER: X7-LAMBENT//PERSONAL_DEVICE-LOCKED]
>> [ENCRYPTION LEVEL: MAXIMUM — PHYSICAL DECRYPTION REQUIRED]
>> [AUTHOR: UNKNOWN]
>> [FILE STATUS: UNSHARED — PRIVATE STORAGE ONLY]
>> [BEGIN PERSONAL ENTRY // EST. DATE: CLASSIFIED]
If you are reading this... I am likely dead.
"High Treason" — that will have been the charge read aloud as I was marched before the firing squad. Which makes you either a fellow True Imperial Patriot... or a witless pawn of the Sith, trying to answer the same question I could never silence:
Why?
Why betray the Empire?
I will tell you why.
For the people of the Empire.
For the people of the Republic.
For the continuation of life in a galaxy that has lost its mind.
My name is [REDACTED://ERROR_404]. Ziost-born. [REDACTED://ERROR_404] in the Imperial Military.
This is my story.
When I was born, the Empire stood at the height of its power. Its war machine cut a path of destruction across the galaxy. Worlds razed, fleets shattered, rivers of blood left in its thread. All of it feeding the ambitions of the Dark Council and our illusive Emperor. I remember watching the Sacking of Coruscant unfold live on my father’s holofeed at our Ziost estate.
I remember being *angry* when Darth Angral plunged his blade into Chancellor Berooken. Not for the Mon Calamari’s death… but because I feared the Republic would fall before I could enlist.
That was my dream.
My father; decorated, brilliant. Has always been a master of logistics, battlefield calculus and military command. I wanted to follow in his footsteps. To serve. To earn my name beneath the legacy of Odile Vaiken. So when the time came, I didn’t wait for the draft. I volunteered. Ziost Officer Academy.
Back when I believed the Empire stood for something.
Order. Power. Strength. Unity.
Vengeance.
But it was a lie. All of it.
My father’s political ascent saw him posted to Dromund Kaas. As his eldest son, I was transferred with him; reassigned to the Kaas City Officer Academy. A prestigious position. My mother remained behind at the Ziost estate to care for my baby sister. My father believed hyperspace might impact her fragile health.
And so, from far away, I bore witness to the death of my homeworld. The beginning of the End.
At first, just rumors. Then brief, heavily censored broadcasts. And then silence. Ziost had gone dark.
Months passed before I returned. My father brought me with him to the dead world, to see what had transpired, if anything could be salvaged from our estate. Myself with the faint hope of finding my mother and sister.
But I felt it as soon as we landed in that... That Grave.
I am no Force-sensitive by any stretch of the imagination, but it was as clear to me as anything. It felt.. *Wrong.*
Not in the way warzones are wrong. But fundamentally. Existentially. The air was still, sterile, hollow. Like walking into a medical facility. As if the Emperor's sundering had rendered it devoid of all life and microbes.
The ground, the very soil dark and ashen, stripped bare robbed of its nutrients.
The winds howled like mourners across the broken cities. Everything was dust. Ash. The wind blowing clouds of this ashy gray substance about in waves. Layers of it everywhere
Even the akk dog cages at our estate were filled with it. A fine, flakey coat... the texture of dead skin.
That’s all that remained.
We accessed the estate’s holologs. My father silent. Stone-faced.
We watched it unfold.
It began with distant blaster fire. Then a triggered motion sensor in my sister’s room. Then... *her*. My mother. Shrouded in that crimson miasma of the Emperor’s will. She moved like a marionett. Slow, stiff, entranced. A puppet on strings.
I watched, helpless, as she picked up my sister from her crib. Looked at her.. Head tilted, like an animal studying something it couldn’t understand.
Then she swung her.
Her tiny body struck the nursery wall. Blood everywhere. My mother just... stood there. Watching. And then she walked, slow and deliberate, down the estate halls.
She turned. Walked the halls toward the barracks.
There... Hagran. Kreeg. Loyal soldiers. Loyal to the Empire, to my Father. Men I had known since I was a child, men I had looked up to since I could walk. They gunned her down without hesitation. Cold. Empty. My mother's life cut short by the same blasters they'd once trained me to use as a child. They stepped over her corpse and marched into the chaos. Mindless. Enslaved by that same dark will. I never saw them again. Only the ash remained.
They were likely unmade hours later when the Emperor’s hunger reached them.
The holofeed caught the wave; that monstrous tide of energy that rolled across Ziost, consuming everything. My mother. My sister. Hagran and Kreeg. Life itself. All reduced to dust.
My father said nothing. He stared into the screen, unmoving. A man with an iron heart indeed.
But I? I only had one question... Why?
Why would the Emperor do this? To his own people? *Loyal* people? Loyal citizens that had *Bled* For him.
He built this Empire. Forged it in his vision for over a millenium, countless Imperial recruits, myself included, swearing oaths of undying loyalty to him and his caus.
So why?
How I wished I had the answer then...
Now, I wish I had never found it.
The truth? The Empire was never a righteous war machine. Never the avenging storm it claimed to be. It was a ritual. A weapon. A suicide pact. A galaxy-wide bloodletting meant to feed a mad god. A suicide scatter-gun held in the mouth of the galaxy, finger on the trigger, held by a maniac.
We were never meant to win. We were meant to die. Ziost was never an exception. It was the template.
This 'Great' Galactic War we have persued for a millenium? Ritualistic slaughter to prime the galaxy for annihilation.
But what did the Sith do when they learned this? When they realized the truth? That everything the Empire was, that everything we had built towards over the long millennia since the fall of Naga Sadow was a lie? A ritualistic suicide pact with a madman?
*Nothing.*
No, worse than nothing.
Like the child of abusive parents, they continued the abuse, even in the Emperor's absence. They continue to wage the War, they continue its meaningless bloodshed. Dragging civilization further into the abyss. They gleefully continue to drag the scalpel of death across the wrist of galactic civilization, and laugh as the lifeblood of trillions of beings continues to be spille across the stars.
And for what? All in the name of vengeance over the Jedi? Hatred of the Republic? Blood purity of the Sith?
Madness! Even without the Emperor, they *Persist*! And for what?
It does not take a military genius to see that the War is lost. The Empire was never meant to win this war... It can't. Only the delusional can still believe in an ultimate Imperial victory to this conflict.
And yet the Sith continue to lead us all to the slaughter. Blinded by their hatred, their lust for revenge, their xenophobia, their traditions. Willingly sacrificing us all on the altar of their ambitions in their names. Unwilling to see the truth... Or perhaps they do see it and simply do not care.
Maybe the Emperor wasn't an outlier. Maybe he was what all Sith truly are. Uncaring. Self-obsessed. Insane.
Monsters.
They would drown the entire galaxy in a sea of blood for their ambitions. Burn it all to cinders to hide from their crippling fear of Death, Defeat, the Loss of their *Power.* And we would be the kindling.
I have heard that the Emperor is truly gone now. Finally defeated.
But I swear this: if even a shadow of his presence still drifts in the void, he is laughing. Laughing at us. At the Sith. At his pawns as they continue to bring death t o the galaxy even in his absence, gleefully spreading the disease of war across the stars. Spreading the rot. The end of all things.
The Empire will fall. Of that I am certain.
It cannot be saved, for the Sith will not let it be saved. They will wage this war for ever if we let them. They would sooner see Dromund Kaas burn as Ziost did rather than surrender their suicidal, destructive quest to destroy the Jedi.
And they would all drag us down with them. They would put every man, woman and child of the Empire between the advancing armies of the Republic and themselves before this war is over. If they have their way our people will cease to exist.
Because in the end they see no difference between us, the enemy or their slaves. We are all meaningless to them. Fuel for their ambitions... Our lives insignificant, our deaths more so.
But we do not have to be their pawns. We do not have to sign another suicide pact with the Sith order after we just barely escaped the one with Emperor Vitiate. We can choose,
Choose peace.
Imperial and Republic forces fought side by side to stop to the Emperor, to stop Zakuul. I saw it. We can live together. But not while the Sith Rule.
They must be cast down. Their temples razed. Their institutions dismantled. Their Empire broken.
Because make no mistake:
This is their Empire. Not ours.
We are naught but Serfs to them. Fodder.
Meat.
The military, our civil structures. They only serve those who bow. Those who align with Sith interests. The interests of another Apathetic Monarch and his Dark Council of maniacs. The interests of madness.
The Empire stands for nothing now but blood. Death. The end of all things. And the Imperial Military? It has become the willing blade of the Sith. A blade at the throat of not only the peoples of the Republic, but those of the Empire. The throat of life itself.
I will do what I must to see our people freed from this terror. The terror of the Sith. And it pains me that the Military must come down with them. For there are good people in Uniform. I know that. I know them. I fought with them. But I know that the will of good people will not be enough to stop this terrible thing we have set in motion.
I know what must be done. Even if it damns me.
Contact has been made. With the Convor. With the Republic SIS.
The die is cast.
If the Force offers an afterlife, I will answer for what comes next.
But the war must end.
[ENTRY TERMINATED — SIGNAL CLOSED]
[LAST ACCESS DATE: UNKNOWN]
