<![CDATA[House Horuset - Stories]]> https://www.horuset.com/ Wed, 16 Sep 2026 18:16:47 +0000 MyBB <![CDATA[The Price of my Future]]> https://www.horuset.com/showthread.php?tid=1639 Sun, 23 Aug 2026 18:30:29 +0000 Malreen]]> https://www.horuset.com/showthread.php?tid=1639
His heart burned for each time the broken wails from the figure grew louder and louder. This time, he would be the saviour. He had to be.

The boy let out a grunt as the building began to collapse in earnest, the blackened wood slamming into his path. Sparks flew across his sweat-stained skin. Eyes wide, he would outstretch his arms in front of him. The wails began melding with a sudden chorus of a crowd. Bloodthirsty? Jubilant? The rage in him began clawing, and he grit his teeth and pressed himself against the scorching cage. And again...  

The chanting grew louder, the darkness in him grew in tandem with the chants rising in intensity. "Champion! Victory! One of all!" 

His fists collided with the wood, the agonizing pain of burning flesh egging him on further, yet as he tried violence again, this time, it failed him. Why? More of the building was falling in front of him, the glowing figure reaching for him throught the flaming tendrils. 

He looked with tears in his eyes, his pale grey eyes, at the figure just out of reach, the light snuffed out slowly by the fire, leaving behind charred streaks. The same grey eyes looked back with fear and pain, then despair, hatred.

It screams, louder... The chants like drums in his head, the fire turning from orange into black. They both reached out....

The man would sit up from his provisional bed, his body soaked from sweat as he looked around the camp. His heart in overdrive as he controlled his breathing. Standing up silently, he began to make way through the sleeping figures around him. His tired eyes studied the soft, peaceful cracking of the bonfire from the evening. Peaceful. The irony was not lost on him as he remembered the evening. He scowled as he regarded the warped, twisted sort of "surrogate family" he was part of... again? Familiar, yes, but the thought unsettled him.
His thoughts drifted to the conversation a few hours ago, his thoughts a maelstorm of emotions peaking in, again, anger.

He lost the past, and it changed him, yes. Yet did he loose the chains, the concept which they drilled into him time and time again?

Was she only keeping him back? Did she hit upon a possible truth?

The constant rain on the Capital made for an soothing place. If one disregarded the occupants, it would still seem unusual to observe as such. Atleast it keeps the fire away.... The man would make his way to the nearby river, musing on his constant companion through the sleepless nights, now more frequent since he tasted the inner dark in the Academy. Kneeling down above the water, he would take off his gloves, and run his hands through the water. Then through his face. He regards the burns on his palms, the reflection in the water behind them shaking from the raindrops. He pulled his lips into a sneer at the sight - the reflection of a younger, healthier, more confident self. The ash-grey eyes watching him intently. As he looked into the mirror, they started to burn.


The boy's lips would curl into a focused pout, as his hands ran swiftly underneath the surface of the small river, his the bustling streets of Rosath echoing behind his back. No one paid heed to the young human he kneeled at the bank. A backwater city in the armpit of the galaxy, a multitude of sentients in any shapes and sizes were running their day-to-day. Between them, a careful, yet steady echo of boots creeped throught the people on the street. A small girl, barely in her first decade, would dart around the legs of an Ithorian, swearing in an alien dialect. 
She slowed down, then stopped behind the boy, with him subconsciously tilting his head to her, yet not losing focus on the task at hand. His voice rose slightly in frustration, yet his eyes hid the truth. 

She was free. They both were.

"Did I not tell you to run off on your own?"

The girl looked around, then pattered closer. Her small hands close to her chest. "It was just a stroll around. What else was I supposed to do?" She squeaked happily.

The boy hummed. The water splashed as the took out the fruits of his labour - a small, half-worn braid of pearls. He ran his fingers through the individual gems for any more dirt. He dropped the item into her right hand. "Be careful next time..." A pause. His eyes narrowed on her left one, tightly clinging a satchel to her chest. "Again?"

"I suppose you do not expect us to die of hunger." Her eyes glinted, lips tugging upwards. She pocketed the necklace, and took out a fruit from her hiding spot. "Pleasure doing business with you."
 
The boy shook his head, his eyes scanning the surroundings as he threw his head to the side, urging the girl to follow as they departed together.

"You know..." The girl mused as she walked through the crowd, savouring the fruit. "... I thought about your idea. How both of us can get a normal life. Not.... This."

Dain rolled his tongue across his teeth. He pondered the thought aswell, for many sleepless nights. He thought about the endless possibilities, to be something more than another gutter rat. The knot of anger tightened in his head. To reach for the stars, to escape the monotonous life of many others around them. They both just... Landed here. No parents, no connections, only a necklace, from their mother they both never knew. Only felt somewhat in their memories as a soothing presence. Calm and loving.

"We will find out a way out of here, in due time. Something that will not put us through back-breaking work to get there."

The two turned a corner into a dark alley, next to an abandoned building where they had their makeshift home. The boy reached out towards door, then stopped suddenly. His eyes narrowed.]]>
His heart burned for each time the broken wails from the figure grew louder and louder. This time, he would be the saviour. He had to be.

The boy let out a grunt as the building began to collapse in earnest, the blackened wood slamming into his path. Sparks flew across his sweat-stained skin. Eyes wide, he would outstretch his arms in front of him. The wails began melding with a sudden chorus of a crowd. Bloodthirsty? Jubilant? The rage in him began clawing, and he grit his teeth and pressed himself against the scorching cage. And again...  

The chanting grew louder, the darkness in him grew in tandem with the chants rising in intensity. "Champion! Victory! One of all!" 

His fists collided with the wood, the agonizing pain of burning flesh egging him on further, yet as he tried violence again, this time, it failed him. Why? More of the building was falling in front of him, the glowing figure reaching for him throught the flaming tendrils. 

He looked with tears in his eyes, his pale grey eyes, at the figure just out of reach, the light snuffed out slowly by the fire, leaving behind charred streaks. The same grey eyes looked back with fear and pain, then despair, hatred.

It screams, louder... The chants like drums in his head, the fire turning from orange into black. They both reached out....

The man would sit up from his provisional bed, his body soaked from sweat as he looked around the camp. His heart in overdrive as he controlled his breathing. Standing up silently, he began to make way through the sleeping figures around him. His tired eyes studied the soft, peaceful cracking of the bonfire from the evening. Peaceful. The irony was not lost on him as he remembered the evening. He scowled as he regarded the warped, twisted sort of "surrogate family" he was part of... again? Familiar, yes, but the thought unsettled him.
His thoughts drifted to the conversation a few hours ago, his thoughts a maelstorm of emotions peaking in, again, anger.

He lost the past, and it changed him, yes. Yet did he loose the chains, the concept which they drilled into him time and time again?

Was she only keeping him back? Did she hit upon a possible truth?

The constant rain on the Capital made for an soothing place. If one disregarded the occupants, it would still seem unusual to observe as such. Atleast it keeps the fire away.... The man would make his way to the nearby river, musing on his constant companion through the sleepless nights, now more frequent since he tasted the inner dark in the Academy. Kneeling down above the water, he would take off his gloves, and run his hands through the water. Then through his face. He regards the burns on his palms, the reflection in the water behind them shaking from the raindrops. He pulled his lips into a sneer at the sight - the reflection of a younger, healthier, more confident self. The ash-grey eyes watching him intently. As he looked into the mirror, they started to burn.


The boy's lips would curl into a focused pout, as his hands ran swiftly underneath the surface of the small river, his the bustling streets of Rosath echoing behind his back. No one paid heed to the young human he kneeled at the bank. A backwater city in the armpit of the galaxy, a multitude of sentients in any shapes and sizes were running their day-to-day. Between them, a careful, yet steady echo of boots creeped throught the people on the street. A small girl, barely in her first decade, would dart around the legs of an Ithorian, swearing in an alien dialect. 
She slowed down, then stopped behind the boy, with him subconsciously tilting his head to her, yet not losing focus on the task at hand. His voice rose slightly in frustration, yet his eyes hid the truth. 

She was free. They both were.

"Did I not tell you to run off on your own?"

The girl looked around, then pattered closer. Her small hands close to her chest. "It was just a stroll around. What else was I supposed to do?" She squeaked happily.

The boy hummed. The water splashed as the took out the fruits of his labour - a small, half-worn braid of pearls. He ran his fingers through the individual gems for any more dirt. He dropped the item into her right hand. "Be careful next time..." A pause. His eyes narrowed on her left one, tightly clinging a satchel to her chest. "Again?"

"I suppose you do not expect us to die of hunger." Her eyes glinted, lips tugging upwards. She pocketed the necklace, and took out a fruit from her hiding spot. "Pleasure doing business with you."
 
The boy shook his head, his eyes scanning the surroundings as he threw his head to the side, urging the girl to follow as they departed together.

"You know..." The girl mused as she walked through the crowd, savouring the fruit. "... I thought about your idea. How both of us can get a normal life. Not.... This."

Dain rolled his tongue across his teeth. He pondered the thought aswell, for many sleepless nights. He thought about the endless possibilities, to be something more than another gutter rat. The knot of anger tightened in his head. To reach for the stars, to escape the monotonous life of many others around them. They both just... Landed here. No parents, no connections, only a necklace, from their mother they both never knew. Only felt somewhat in their memories as a soothing presence. Calm and loving.

"We will find out a way out of here, in due time. Something that will not put us through back-breaking work to get there."

The two turned a corner into a dark alley, next to an abandoned building where they had their makeshift home. The boy reached out towards door, then stopped suddenly. His eyes narrowed.]]> <![CDATA[Dreaming Pains]]> https://www.horuset.com/showthread.php?tid=1633 Thu, 13 Aug 2026 21:16:24 +0000 Caffeline]]> https://www.horuset.com/showthread.php?tid=1633 Jadzia breathed sharply between the sequences, her arms aching from brandishing the two foils for what felt like hours on end.

Find the rhythm... manipulate it...

Off-hand protecting while the main-hand attacked. Main-hand defending as the offhand struck. Always one defending, one attacking, though the roles were fluid. Slowly she settled into a pattern, gaining more confidence as she swung, slashed and braced against the air, keeping her footing over the uneven wet ground. A haunting tune played on a stringed instrument seemed to fill the air, giving more structure to her movements while also deafening her to her surroundings. The beat of that song guided her steps, body taut and controlled as she completed the sequence, both foils held angled away from her body at different heights. Zia felt like she had been dancing, though she had never been taught.

She had not stumbled at all. A first.

She had also not noticed the man who watched her. Zia froze when she finally saw him materialise out of thin air, his eyes preceding the rest of his features.

Brown eyes widened as she recognised him; dark hair scraped back from his brow, strange tattoos etched into his forehead and chin; his arms were folded across his chest as he leaned against a tree trunk, intrigue glinting in those eerie eyes of his.

He stood up straight, fingers flexing as a saber hilt snapped into his hand from his belt, a second saber drawn from behind his back.

"Defend yourself." The smooth, Balmorran-tinged accent rang through the space, the apprentice surging forward less than a second later. Zia scrambled to defend herself, her offhand trembling as it blocked his first strike. His second slash came in high and fast while his first smacked her foil aside. She struggled to keep his sabers parried, even with Augmentation coursing through her veins. Each of his strikes had the strength of durasteel - and she could tell he was holding back.

Every time she thought she had his fighting rhythm understood he changed it, always keeping her off balance. Back and forth the pair slashed and thrust at each other, their movements dance-like upon that slippery grass beneath the mountain and the trees. Before long she felt the chill of the mountain shadow looming over her; he had successfully herded her towards a wall. Brown eyes glared into eerie yellow, and something hardened inside her. Zia kicked off the rock behind her, using the momentum to bring her main-hand down in a zone one slash while her off-hand sliced down to intercept his reactionary attack.

She saw a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes as he easily blocked her strike, ducking aside and shifting his attack pattern yet again. Zia pressed the offensive, her off-hand mainly acting defensive as she strove to beat him back towards the line of trees. She did not slip or stumble. Her foils hummed through the air as strike met strike, somehow managing to meet or evade each of his attacks. The apprentice unleashed a vicious horizontal slash, Zia finally slipping on the wet ground. Gravity saved her as she watched the glowing red blade pass an inch above her nose, the acolyte rolling away and scrambling back to her feet.

He did not relent, his second attack chopping down where she had been lying a moment before. Zia brought her foils up to parry the next set, but he was too fast. He twisted one blade around, catching and flicking both of her foils aside, lunging forward to stab her in the stomach.

Zia juddered. The saber burned white hot through her insides. Her mouth opened but no words came out, brown eyes staring in horror at the apprentice whom stood right in front of her. She heard the hiss of the lightsabers being powered down. Her knees buckled. She tasted mud.

A hand gripped her shoulder and flipped her onto her back. He knelt beside her, flexing his gloved fingers before placing his hand over her wound. His eyes locked with hers as they began to glow. He twitched a smile down at her.

"Look at me."

Then the pain blazed through her frame. Concentrated from his hand, waves of dark power emanated through her body. She could feel her damaged insides starting to stitch themselves back together. Piece by piece. Nerve by nerve. Centimeter by centimeter. Zia could feel every single moment, the pain roaring beyond anything she had ever experienced before.

She could not look away.

His eyes blazed with channeled power.

A scream tore from her throat...

...

...Jadzia bolted upright, panting and clutching at her unharmed stomach. She could still feel the burn of the lightsaber blade impaling her; the gentle pressure of the gloved hand resting on her damaged skin...

Those eerie, glowing yellow eyes staring into hers.

Zia buried herself in her meagre blankets, curled up with her head under the rough material. She could not sleep for the rest of the night, shivering from a new, deep-rooted dread.]]> Jadzia breathed sharply between the sequences, her arms aching from brandishing the two foils for what felt like hours on end.

Find the rhythm... manipulate it...

Off-hand protecting while the main-hand attacked. Main-hand defending as the offhand struck. Always one defending, one attacking, though the roles were fluid. Slowly she settled into a pattern, gaining more confidence as she swung, slashed and braced against the air, keeping her footing over the uneven wet ground. A haunting tune played on a stringed instrument seemed to fill the air, giving more structure to her movements while also deafening her to her surroundings. The beat of that song guided her steps, body taut and controlled as she completed the sequence, both foils held angled away from her body at different heights. Zia felt like she had been dancing, though she had never been taught.

She had not stumbled at all. A first.

She had also not noticed the man who watched her. Zia froze when she finally saw him materialise out of thin air, his eyes preceding the rest of his features.

Brown eyes widened as she recognised him; dark hair scraped back from his brow, strange tattoos etched into his forehead and chin; his arms were folded across his chest as he leaned against a tree trunk, intrigue glinting in those eerie eyes of his.

He stood up straight, fingers flexing as a saber hilt snapped into his hand from his belt, a second saber drawn from behind his back.

"Defend yourself." The smooth, Balmorran-tinged accent rang through the space, the apprentice surging forward less than a second later. Zia scrambled to defend herself, her offhand trembling as it blocked his first strike. His second slash came in high and fast while his first smacked her foil aside. She struggled to keep his sabers parried, even with Augmentation coursing through her veins. Each of his strikes had the strength of durasteel - and she could tell he was holding back.

Every time she thought she had his fighting rhythm understood he changed it, always keeping her off balance. Back and forth the pair slashed and thrust at each other, their movements dance-like upon that slippery grass beneath the mountain and the trees. Before long she felt the chill of the mountain shadow looming over her; he had successfully herded her towards a wall. Brown eyes glared into eerie yellow, and something hardened inside her. Zia kicked off the rock behind her, using the momentum to bring her main-hand down in a zone one slash while her off-hand sliced down to intercept his reactionary attack.

She saw a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes as he easily blocked her strike, ducking aside and shifting his attack pattern yet again. Zia pressed the offensive, her off-hand mainly acting defensive as she strove to beat him back towards the line of trees. She did not slip or stumble. Her foils hummed through the air as strike met strike, somehow managing to meet or evade each of his attacks. The apprentice unleashed a vicious horizontal slash, Zia finally slipping on the wet ground. Gravity saved her as she watched the glowing red blade pass an inch above her nose, the acolyte rolling away and scrambling back to her feet.

He did not relent, his second attack chopping down where she had been lying a moment before. Zia brought her foils up to parry the next set, but he was too fast. He twisted one blade around, catching and flicking both of her foils aside, lunging forward to stab her in the stomach.

Zia juddered. The saber burned white hot through her insides. Her mouth opened but no words came out, brown eyes staring in horror at the apprentice whom stood right in front of her. She heard the hiss of the lightsabers being powered down. Her knees buckled. She tasted mud.

A hand gripped her shoulder and flipped her onto her back. He knelt beside her, flexing his gloved fingers before placing his hand over her wound. His eyes locked with hers as they began to glow. He twitched a smile down at her.

"Look at me."

Then the pain blazed through her frame. Concentrated from his hand, waves of dark power emanated through her body. She could feel her damaged insides starting to stitch themselves back together. Piece by piece. Nerve by nerve. Centimeter by centimeter. Zia could feel every single moment, the pain roaring beyond anything she had ever experienced before.

She could not look away.

His eyes blazed with channeled power.

A scream tore from her throat...

...

...Jadzia bolted upright, panting and clutching at her unharmed stomach. She could still feel the burn of the lightsaber blade impaling her; the gentle pressure of the gloved hand resting on her damaged skin...

Those eerie, glowing yellow eyes staring into hers.

Zia buried herself in her meagre blankets, curled up with her head under the rough material. She could not sleep for the rest of the night, shivering from a new, deep-rooted dread.]]> <![CDATA[[IC] Sah’sha’s Personal Scriptures]]> https://www.horuset.com/showthread.php?tid=1631 Mon, 10 Aug 2026 09:31:30 +0000 Smootie]]> https://www.horuset.com/showthread.php?tid=1631
There is a sturdy box with a biometric lock that requires a liquid sample to scan before it can be unlocked. It is properly placed upon a shelf in Sah’sha’s quarters, next to a stand containing a lightsaber hilt.
Within the box are written and rolled-up scriptures on pieces of thin, rough-textured paper. Proper use of a pencil upon the paper is difficult, making it nearly impossible to write anything cohesive.
[Image: Untitled-2-Recoveryed1.png]
]]>
There is a sturdy box with a biometric lock that requires a liquid sample to scan before it can be unlocked. It is properly placed upon a shelf in Sah’sha’s quarters, next to a stand containing a lightsaber hilt.
Within the box are written and rolled-up scriptures on pieces of thin, rough-textured paper. Proper use of a pencil upon the paper is difficult, making it nearly impossible to write anything cohesive.
[Image: Untitled-2-Recoveryed1.png]
]]> <![CDATA["Tave iyutrekyr iv Zia"]]> https://www.horuset.com/showthread.php?tid=1608 Tue, 28 Jul 2026 10:59:00 +0000 Caffeline]]> https://www.horuset.com/showthread.php?tid=1608 An old-style flimsi book wrapped in leather and secured with an old but serviceable genetic lock. Kaasian make, but the writing inside seems nonsensical; at least until a key is discovered on the inside cover.
Rhûine summoned me to the estate a few days ago. Unfortunately shuttles to Korriban and Kaas do not need permission to take, so I felt obliged to obey. I couldn't think of a reason to refuse again; not without having to ask advice from an Overseer. An easy way to invite ridicule and investigation. I want to put that life as far behind me as possible but it still snares at my ankles to pull me back.

To think that I once hoped to serve that family in the same vein as my parents... My skin crawls in disgust at that thought now.

The patriarch saw fit to remind me that I owe everything I am as a potential Sith to him, because it was 'his' decision to release me to Korriban, thereby making all my success thereafter his rightful due.

As if I didn't know it is Imperial Law that forced his hand.

The insufferable hutt-swill.

He actually expects me to continue to serve him as his family's personal Sith. He intends the Rhûine Family to claw back notice in Kaas political circles by having me serve their interests. I laughed until I realised he was serious. It did not take much for him to hold my parents' service and lives hostage until I lied my agreement. His arrogance rivals that of a fully fledged Sith, yet has less foundation than a daydream.

I will not. I will break from the future Rhûine sees for me. They released me to Korriban on the assumption that I would continue to be an asset to their plans. I will break the teeth in their smug smiles. I will forge my own name and walk my own path, rather than be shackled to their nauseating bluster any longer.

Poor fool assumes he cannot be lied to by his servants. If one can lie for you, they can lie to you. He forgets this. He would not survive a week on Korriban himself.

However... it did drive home a point I have been avoiding. Trying to use my parents as leverage means he thinks he has perceived a weakness. If it happens once, it will happen again. Leverage is not a weakness I can afford. If he can use them, so will others, in time.

A weakness such as this cannot continue.

I met with them before I left. They did not know me. I have evolved into something they do not recognise. Their daughter's veneer is simply a chrysalis for something beyond their comprehension. They refuse to leave Rhûine's service despite my efforts: proud and content with their meagre lives serving a withered House. Seeing them again... I am disgusted by how Rhûine thinks I am so easily handled through their welfare.

Can I do it? Can I extinguish their lives to set my own free? 

I do not have the power yet. 

But I will.]]> An old-style flimsi book wrapped in leather and secured with an old but serviceable genetic lock. Kaasian make, but the writing inside seems nonsensical; at least until a key is discovered on the inside cover.
Rhûine summoned me to the estate a few days ago. Unfortunately shuttles to Korriban and Kaas do not need permission to take, so I felt obliged to obey. I couldn't think of a reason to refuse again; not without having to ask advice from an Overseer. An easy way to invite ridicule and investigation. I want to put that life as far behind me as possible but it still snares at my ankles to pull me back.

To think that I once hoped to serve that family in the same vein as my parents... My skin crawls in disgust at that thought now.

The patriarch saw fit to remind me that I owe everything I am as a potential Sith to him, because it was 'his' decision to release me to Korriban, thereby making all my success thereafter his rightful due.

As if I didn't know it is Imperial Law that forced his hand.

The insufferable hutt-swill.

He actually expects me to continue to serve him as his family's personal Sith. He intends the Rhûine Family to claw back notice in Kaas political circles by having me serve their interests. I laughed until I realised he was serious. It did not take much for him to hold my parents' service and lives hostage until I lied my agreement. His arrogance rivals that of a fully fledged Sith, yet has less foundation than a daydream.

I will not. I will break from the future Rhûine sees for me. They released me to Korriban on the assumption that I would continue to be an asset to their plans. I will break the teeth in their smug smiles. I will forge my own name and walk my own path, rather than be shackled to their nauseating bluster any longer.

Poor fool assumes he cannot be lied to by his servants. If one can lie for you, they can lie to you. He forgets this. He would not survive a week on Korriban himself.

However... it did drive home a point I have been avoiding. Trying to use my parents as leverage means he thinks he has perceived a weakness. If it happens once, it will happen again. Leverage is not a weakness I can afford. If he can use them, so will others, in time.

A weakness such as this cannot continue.

I met with them before I left. They did not know me. I have evolved into something they do not recognise. Their daughter's veneer is simply a chrysalis for something beyond their comprehension. They refuse to leave Rhûine's service despite my efforts: proud and content with their meagre lives serving a withered House. Seeing them again... I am disgusted by how Rhûine thinks I am so easily handled through their welfare.

Can I do it? Can I extinguish their lives to set my own free? 

I do not have the power yet. 

But I will.]]> <![CDATA[Worth of Flesh]]> https://www.horuset.com/showthread.php?tid=1565 Tue, 02 Jun 2026 15:43:31 +0000 Sarias]]> https://www.horuset.com/showthread.php?tid=1565 [Perimeter Defenses Offline]
Access Request to [Humanoid Vault] - [Section B-3]'...
Accessing...
Accessing...
Conducting Security Check...
[Bio-scan] - Confirmed
[Retinal-Scan] - Confirmed
[Voice Clearance] - [Confirmed]
Security Clearance Granted...
Access Granted [Aregra Nyash]
[Archive Locks Lifted]


Each confirmation held its typical delay of 10 seconds, preventing swift entry as the isolated network ran its internal tests for foreign frequency, isolating even a stray light needing repair. The scent of anti-bacterial misting and iron from provided blood filled her nose with morbid comforts: Familiar, more so by now than the name it confirmed the entry with. Kept out of convenience when the old database merged with the High Security Labs, it stared back at her from the console: It could be changed...

The Lord proceeded inside, chilled air escaping past painted lips.

Tiers of security within her labs was an ever evolving puzzle without a true answer: Risks of cross contaminations, ensuring particular sithspawn populations were kept managed, deciding what specimen could be moved safely and what needed a quarter of the building sealed shut to reduce risk of escape. How long guard regiments could risk gradual corruption before needing rotating, what slaves were disposal and constant monitoring of what laid within. Droids had taken over what positions could be spared away - but even they were not allowed into the deeper vault. What droids resided here were assembled and charged - never leaving, confined to a subterranean vault containing...

The mundane - at least if measured against the larger picture of other horrors in the upper layers. Each arranged with a measure of 'care' the living never saw. Each chamber a faded silhouette cast in shadows of deep-frost and faint blue lights kept at just enough power to distinguish them. Gifted, salvaged, claimed or taken in combat - the bodies bearing witness to every movement held -something- marking them of worth to preserve. 

Basic descriptions sat handwritten on the front of each tank. No more was needed - she recalled them all.

Zabrak Female - Adult - Sith
Bearing serveral cybernetics of note, some integrated with her two hearts - the primary reason for her preservation, exchanged for a lesson to an Apprentice Tutam. By extend of his demise she was now proof of his skills. 

Human Male - Adolescence - Civillian
A burst open chest cavity stitched together shut by hands less experienced at the time: Much tissue had been lost, necrotic bones discarded than preserved with the body upon failed genetic alterations. 

Steps of flat heels continued to echo amongst humming of preservation vats, serveral parts not requiring dedicated cyro tanks passed by in their reinforced, modular shelf storage casings. An intact corpse always afforded more insight, but in select cases? The impartial allowed gathering intel ease of dismissal or proving plausibility. 

Gen'Dai Male - Adult - Sith
One of countless parts delivered to her by dutiful apprentices and members of the powerbase. The cells were yet active with potential for regrowth - perhaps to be the catalyst for a creation yet to be born, once restraint finally gave way to temptation once more. 

She looked at the severed arm a touch longer - 5 minutes passing, 10 minutes...a breathe: She continued. 

[Species Unknown] [Gender Unknown] - Ages ranging from Child to Elderly - Civillian
Through dissolved to a point, a trained eye could make out what once had been limbs, internal partially liquefied organs and stray fragments of spinal columns, femurs and larger bones. Even years later that more was not recovered from the Quiet Speaker's lair, was an even gnawing regret and frustration. It could not be contained, but just a few minutes longer was all she had needed. Thankfully the Rage of Rhelg's corpse sat secure within her vaults now - a marvel in truth...perhaps, the third could be recovered alive?

Nearby whirring alerted a droid had finally booted up, arriving with hoverplatform and two additional droids moving behind it - their vocal boxes never installed, keeping their quiet bleeps the only thing to break hums of machinery and her now stalled steps. Focus drited from regrets and temptations - pride filling her before seethed anger burned it away before the typical mind driven in efficiency took hold once more. 

Sith-blooded Human Male - Adult - Sith Lord
Kitais' remained handsome in its state, the man flanked by his two apprentices as they did in death. If one squinted enough and surpressed feelings of nausea, the fattened visage of a brother could vaguely be made out. In another life where choices had been different perhaps an invaueable ally...but in this? A resource to be used...for there were few things that drew emotions to a point of fury, and quiet admiration than what she had chosen to attach of meaning to it. 

"...See the Lord  Graush brought to the central table. Thaw an isolated section of the lower back, no more than 53.2% to permit blood extraction without damaging preserved tissue upon re-freezing". 

Quiet bleeps from the droids sounded in confirmation as they began to detach it from its holding frame and place it on the hover transport - metal scraping harshly, though her eyes had already wandered further into the vault.

Many tanks remained for inspection once the extraction was done...]]> [Perimeter Defenses Offline]
Access Request to [Humanoid Vault] - [Section B-3]'...
Accessing...
Accessing...
Conducting Security Check...
[Bio-scan] - Confirmed
[Retinal-Scan] - Confirmed
[Voice Clearance] - [Confirmed]
Security Clearance Granted...
Access Granted [Aregra Nyash]
[Archive Locks Lifted]


Each confirmation held its typical delay of 10 seconds, preventing swift entry as the isolated network ran its internal tests for foreign frequency, isolating even a stray light needing repair. The scent of anti-bacterial misting and iron from provided blood filled her nose with morbid comforts: Familiar, more so by now than the name it confirmed the entry with. Kept out of convenience when the old database merged with the High Security Labs, it stared back at her from the console: It could be changed...

The Lord proceeded inside, chilled air escaping past painted lips.

Tiers of security within her labs was an ever evolving puzzle without a true answer: Risks of cross contaminations, ensuring particular sithspawn populations were kept managed, deciding what specimen could be moved safely and what needed a quarter of the building sealed shut to reduce risk of escape. How long guard regiments could risk gradual corruption before needing rotating, what slaves were disposal and constant monitoring of what laid within. Droids had taken over what positions could be spared away - but even they were not allowed into the deeper vault. What droids resided here were assembled and charged - never leaving, confined to a subterranean vault containing...

The mundane - at least if measured against the larger picture of other horrors in the upper layers. Each arranged with a measure of 'care' the living never saw. Each chamber a faded silhouette cast in shadows of deep-frost and faint blue lights kept at just enough power to distinguish them. Gifted, salvaged, claimed or taken in combat - the bodies bearing witness to every movement held -something- marking them of worth to preserve. 

Basic descriptions sat handwritten on the front of each tank. No more was needed - she recalled them all.

Zabrak Female - Adult - Sith
Bearing serveral cybernetics of note, some integrated with her two hearts - the primary reason for her preservation, exchanged for a lesson to an Apprentice Tutam. By extend of his demise she was now proof of his skills. 

Human Male - Adolescence - Civillian
A burst open chest cavity stitched together shut by hands less experienced at the time: Much tissue had been lost, necrotic bones discarded than preserved with the body upon failed genetic alterations. 

Steps of flat heels continued to echo amongst humming of preservation vats, serveral parts not requiring dedicated cyro tanks passed by in their reinforced, modular shelf storage casings. An intact corpse always afforded more insight, but in select cases? The impartial allowed gathering intel ease of dismissal or proving plausibility. 

Gen'Dai Male - Adult - Sith
One of countless parts delivered to her by dutiful apprentices and members of the powerbase. The cells were yet active with potential for regrowth - perhaps to be the catalyst for a creation yet to be born, once restraint finally gave way to temptation once more. 

She looked at the severed arm a touch longer - 5 minutes passing, 10 minutes...a breathe: She continued. 

[Species Unknown] [Gender Unknown] - Ages ranging from Child to Elderly - Civillian
Through dissolved to a point, a trained eye could make out what once had been limbs, internal partially liquefied organs and stray fragments of spinal columns, femurs and larger bones. Even years later that more was not recovered from the Quiet Speaker's lair, was an even gnawing regret and frustration. It could not be contained, but just a few minutes longer was all she had needed. Thankfully the Rage of Rhelg's corpse sat secure within her vaults now - a marvel in truth...perhaps, the third could be recovered alive?

Nearby whirring alerted a droid had finally booted up, arriving with hoverplatform and two additional droids moving behind it - their vocal boxes never installed, keeping their quiet bleeps the only thing to break hums of machinery and her now stalled steps. Focus drited from regrets and temptations - pride filling her before seethed anger burned it away before the typical mind driven in efficiency took hold once more. 

Sith-blooded Human Male - Adult - Sith Lord
Kitais' remained handsome in its state, the man flanked by his two apprentices as they did in death. If one squinted enough and surpressed feelings of nausea, the fattened visage of a brother could vaguely be made out. In another life where choices had been different perhaps an invaueable ally...but in this? A resource to be used...for there were few things that drew emotions to a point of fury, and quiet admiration than what she had chosen to attach of meaning to it. 

"...See the Lord  Graush brought to the central table. Thaw an isolated section of the lower back, no more than 53.2% to permit blood extraction without damaging preserved tissue upon re-freezing". 

Quiet bleeps from the droids sounded in confirmation as they began to detach it from its holding frame and place it on the hover transport - metal scraping harshly, though her eyes had already wandered further into the vault.

Many tanks remained for inspection once the extraction was done...]]> <![CDATA[[IC-Journal] - The Cookbook]]> https://www.horuset.com/showthread.php?tid=1526 Wed, 15 Apr 2026 11:48:01 +0000 Amara]]> https://www.horuset.com/showthread.php?tid=1526 ((The following is an IC review of the character Amara Thayne. The observations, notes and thoughts are the characters. Now, I'm sure I don't have to mention this but getting your hands on the things in here IS possible. But should be difficult - if you want to make the attempt. Let me know ;) ))

Hidden, deep in the personal files upon the datapad registered to Apprentice Amara Thayne there was a file. Oddly named: "Cookbook" - the name meant to distract from the true nature of the work. A series of both text and audio files recorded by the pale faced apprentice herself. Ranging as far back as her first day at the Horuset estates. Those first entries were often filled with questions, self pitty - reflections and angry rants about those red skinned bastards. There was one red skinned bastard she'd spoken off fondly, though mentions of him had slowly faded away.

One entry remembers meeting the twi'lek overseer for the first time. Being choked out for no apparent reason and left freezing in the snow. Another entry remembers Apprentice Mharn, chewing out another acolyte - then throwing her into the wall. Again, for no apparent reason. 

The more modern entries are starting to sound colder. More calculating, though she will still occasionally rant about the red skinned menace. Her tone however about some of them having changed. 

//Open secure file
//Password - ********************
//Authorizing
//Authorising
//Password accepted
//Begin recording...

The voice of Amara broke into the dark silence..

Entry - 23

I smell like a swamp - no surprise, that operation might as well have been in a swamp given how sweaty.. Why would I care about that. The hunt was a success, the sith have once more conquered.. wildlife. Though I must admit, like the vine-cat those lizards were magnificent creatures. Don't see what Nivalis plans to do with that damned frog - and I don't want to know either. 

There was a pause in the monologue - the sounds of clasps being undone, and something heavyish being heaved off of a body. A sigh of relief also followed.

Blacksqualls great tits does it feel to be out of that thing.. it is a fine piece of armor.. but horrible in heat. Where was I? Right.. the frog, and the operation. The island was clamed - I just hope it was worth the effort. 

Another brief pause. Sounds of movement in whatever room Amara was occupying at the moment.

Veilak.. Zveris - I'm just going to keep calling him 'the overseer', easier that way. Has taught me the basics of Jar'kai - still no word on that saberstaff.. maybe one day. 

Neithyra.. my.. unofficial sister, something seems to grind her gears. Blacksqualls tits that woman - I didn't think anything could get past her shields. But seems someone shot an ion torpedo right at her exhaustport.

Another pause.

Someone's coming...

//End log]]> ((The following is an IC review of the character Amara Thayne. The observations, notes and thoughts are the characters. Now, I'm sure I don't have to mention this but getting your hands on the things in here IS possible. But should be difficult - if you want to make the attempt. Let me know ;) ))

Hidden, deep in the personal files upon the datapad registered to Apprentice Amara Thayne there was a file. Oddly named: "Cookbook" - the name meant to distract from the true nature of the work. A series of both text and audio files recorded by the pale faced apprentice herself. Ranging as far back as her first day at the Horuset estates. Those first entries were often filled with questions, self pitty - reflections and angry rants about those red skinned bastards. There was one red skinned bastard she'd spoken off fondly, though mentions of him had slowly faded away.

One entry remembers meeting the twi'lek overseer for the first time. Being choked out for no apparent reason and left freezing in the snow. Another entry remembers Apprentice Mharn, chewing out another acolyte - then throwing her into the wall. Again, for no apparent reason. 

The more modern entries are starting to sound colder. More calculating, though she will still occasionally rant about the red skinned menace. Her tone however about some of them having changed. 

//Open secure file
//Password - ********************
//Authorizing
//Authorising
//Password accepted
//Begin recording...

The voice of Amara broke into the dark silence..

Entry - 23

I smell like a swamp - no surprise, that operation might as well have been in a swamp given how sweaty.. Why would I care about that. The hunt was a success, the sith have once more conquered.. wildlife. Though I must admit, like the vine-cat those lizards were magnificent creatures. Don't see what Nivalis plans to do with that damned frog - and I don't want to know either. 

There was a pause in the monologue - the sounds of clasps being undone, and something heavyish being heaved off of a body. A sigh of relief also followed.

Blacksqualls great tits does it feel to be out of that thing.. it is a fine piece of armor.. but horrible in heat. Where was I? Right.. the frog, and the operation. The island was clamed - I just hope it was worth the effort. 

Another brief pause. Sounds of movement in whatever room Amara was occupying at the moment.

Veilak.. Zveris - I'm just going to keep calling him 'the overseer', easier that way. Has taught me the basics of Jar'kai - still no word on that saberstaff.. maybe one day. 

Neithyra.. my.. unofficial sister, something seems to grind her gears. Blacksqualls tits that woman - I didn't think anything could get past her shields. But seems someone shot an ion torpedo right at her exhaustport.

Another pause.

Someone's coming...

//End log]]> <![CDATA[[IC] Holocron - Darth Trakaton Kalkoran]]> https://www.horuset.com/showthread.php?tid=1478 Thu, 26 Feb 2026 18:58:36 +0000 Trakaton Kalkoran]]> https://www.horuset.com/showthread.php?tid=1478
The Holocron of Darth Trakaton Kalkoran

[Image: 4Po9r5D.png]
The Holocron of Darth Trakaton Kalkoran was an imposing creation. Pyramid shaped with four sides, each was detailed in a different way telling some tale that the Dark Lord wished to ensure some remnants of was passed down through the millenia. To those who knew the tales and stories they depicted, what was on the holocron itself was clear enough. The first face was of Darth Kalkoran and Lord Sanguinis's faces, turned towards one another both without helmet, revealing their Pureblood features. The second face was a depiction of Darth Kalkoran, Lord Sanguinis, Lord Hazlem and some others defeating Zarrious Zynn, those fateful final moments captured forever. The third face was of Darth Kalkoran himself, stood on a rocky outcrop commanding a legion of Imperial Soldiers in battle. The fourth face was taken up in it's entirety by a detailed and runed version of the House Kalkoran sigil, High Sith script used to repeat the word 'Dominion' around the circularity of the blazoned symbol.

The holocron was always cold to the touch. It's metal features made entirely of Sith Steel and designed alike old architecture from Korriban. Finer details were inlaid with gold, silver and platinum alike to give stark constrast between the robust and ancient Sith Steel metals and the more modern stylised decorations. The finer metals were used to punctuate certain aspects of each of the designs on the separate faces of the holocron itself. Between the metal structures, purple crystal lattices could be seen criss-crossed throughout and filling in many of the gaps, adding designwork and revealing the holocron's constant inner glow. The holocron was seeped in the Dark Side of the force, a presence not too dissimilar to Darth Kalkoran's own laying in wait within. It was clear that the Holocron had been created with longevity in mind, it would likely take centuries before the holocron even began to show any signs of what may become it's own storied history.

If accessed and the Gatekeeper within was willing, the user of the Holocron would see Darth Kalkoran in full. His blackened armour was proudly presented, the long cloak hung from his shoulders heavily, giving away the weight of it just as it did in life. The Gatekeeper's arms would be folded across his chest and the custom-fit plates of his armour looked as comfortable as an embrace. The scar on the right side of his face would be barely visible, his head ever so slightly turned to the right of the user, as if looking over their shoulder at something behind them. 

The holocron was newly made and it's contents was still being added to religously by Darth Kalkoran. Not everything that the Dark Lord would wish to be part of the holocron was added to it yet.
The History and Life of Darth Trakaton Kalkoran:
Spoiler: Before Acolytehood:
Spoiler: Acolytehood within the Horuset Powerbase:
Spoiler: Ascending:
Spoiler: The Apprentice of Lord Saud:
Spoiler: The Apprentice of Darth Crannus Horuset:
Spoiler: Ascending II:
Spoiler: A Lord of the Sith I:
Spoiler: A Lord of the Sith II:
Spoiler: A Lord of the Sith III:
Spoiler: A Lord of the Sith IV:
Spoiler: A Lord of the Sith V:
Spoiler: Ascending III:
Spoiler: A Dark Lord of the Sith I:
Spoiler: A Dark Lord of the Sith II:
The Teachings of Darth Trakaton Kalkoran:
Spoiler: Philosophy:
Spoiler: The Sith Code:
Spoiler: Tradition within the Sith Empire:
Spoiler: Small Scale Military Land Tactics:
Spoiler: Grand Scale Military Land Strategies:
Spoiler: Grand Scale Military Naval Strategies:
Spoiler: Lightsaber Combat I:
Spoiler: Lightsaber Combat II:
Spoiler: Lightsaber Combat III:
Spoiler: Lightsaber Combat IV:
Spoiler: Telekinetic Force Powers:
Spoiler: Barrier Force Powers:
Spoiler: Form V: Djem So:
Spoiler: Form V: Shien:
Spoiler: Control Force Powers:
Spoiler: Sith Sorcery:
[Image: oJUse2q.png]
]]>
The Holocron of Darth Trakaton Kalkoran

[Image: 4Po9r5D.png]
The Holocron of Darth Trakaton Kalkoran was an imposing creation. Pyramid shaped with four sides, each was detailed in a different way telling some tale that the Dark Lord wished to ensure some remnants of was passed down through the millenia. To those who knew the tales and stories they depicted, what was on the holocron itself was clear enough. The first face was of Darth Kalkoran and Lord Sanguinis's faces, turned towards one another both without helmet, revealing their Pureblood features. The second face was a depiction of Darth Kalkoran, Lord Sanguinis, Lord Hazlem and some others defeating Zarrious Zynn, those fateful final moments captured forever. The third face was of Darth Kalkoran himself, stood on a rocky outcrop commanding a legion of Imperial Soldiers in battle. The fourth face was taken up in it's entirety by a detailed and runed version of the House Kalkoran sigil, High Sith script used to repeat the word 'Dominion' around the circularity of the blazoned symbol.

The holocron was always cold to the touch. It's metal features made entirely of Sith Steel and designed alike old architecture from Korriban. Finer details were inlaid with gold, silver and platinum alike to give stark constrast between the robust and ancient Sith Steel metals and the more modern stylised decorations. The finer metals were used to punctuate certain aspects of each of the designs on the separate faces of the holocron itself. Between the metal structures, purple crystal lattices could be seen criss-crossed throughout and filling in many of the gaps, adding designwork and revealing the holocron's constant inner glow. The holocron was seeped in the Dark Side of the force, a presence not too dissimilar to Darth Kalkoran's own laying in wait within. It was clear that the Holocron had been created with longevity in mind, it would likely take centuries before the holocron even began to show any signs of what may become it's own storied history.

If accessed and the Gatekeeper within was willing, the user of the Holocron would see Darth Kalkoran in full. His blackened armour was proudly presented, the long cloak hung from his shoulders heavily, giving away the weight of it just as it did in life. The Gatekeeper's arms would be folded across his chest and the custom-fit plates of his armour looked as comfortable as an embrace. The scar on the right side of his face would be barely visible, his head ever so slightly turned to the right of the user, as if looking over their shoulder at something behind them. 

The holocron was newly made and it's contents was still being added to religously by Darth Kalkoran. Not everything that the Dark Lord would wish to be part of the holocron was added to it yet.
The History and Life of Darth Trakaton Kalkoran:
Spoiler: Before Acolytehood:
Spoiler: Acolytehood within the Horuset Powerbase:
Spoiler: Ascending:
Spoiler: The Apprentice of Lord Saud:
Spoiler: The Apprentice of Darth Crannus Horuset:
Spoiler: Ascending II:
Spoiler: A Lord of the Sith I:
Spoiler: A Lord of the Sith II:
Spoiler: A Lord of the Sith III:
Spoiler: A Lord of the Sith IV:
Spoiler: A Lord of the Sith V:
Spoiler: Ascending III:
Spoiler: A Dark Lord of the Sith I:
Spoiler: A Dark Lord of the Sith II:
The Teachings of Darth Trakaton Kalkoran:
Spoiler: Philosophy:
Spoiler: The Sith Code:
Spoiler: Tradition within the Sith Empire:
Spoiler: Small Scale Military Land Tactics:
Spoiler: Grand Scale Military Land Strategies:
Spoiler: Grand Scale Military Naval Strategies:
Spoiler: Lightsaber Combat I:
Spoiler: Lightsaber Combat II:
Spoiler: Lightsaber Combat III:
Spoiler: Lightsaber Combat IV:
Spoiler: Telekinetic Force Powers:
Spoiler: Barrier Force Powers:
Spoiler: Form V: Djem So:
Spoiler: Form V: Shien:
Spoiler: Control Force Powers:
Spoiler: Sith Sorcery:
[Image: oJUse2q.png]
]]> <![CDATA[The Moff's Hunt]]> https://www.horuset.com/showthread.php?tid=1458 Tue, 09 Dec 2025 16:54:04 +0000 Krassus Horuset]]> https://www.horuset.com/showthread.php?tid=1458 Part I:

The glow of the cig rendered the speeder’s tinted viewport briefly opaque as Kemma took another drag, the dimmed view of the thorny brushes whipping past giving way to the governor of Nam’ta’s own reflection. Dark circles ringed her deep-set emerald eyes, and her once vibrant orange hair, now streaked with silvery gray at the edges, was tied into a bun above her head. For a moment, Kemma barely recognized the woman staring back at her, so worn down by the pressures of recent years, yet the thought faded as the reflection was obscured by a soft plume of smoke. Her attention shifted from the window as the speeder door slid open with a mechanical hiss.

“We’ll be arriving shortly, Governor. I took the liberty of confirming our arrival with the Moff’s staff,” Ensign Ernhard announced with his distinct Kaasian accent, offering a curt bow before seating himself across from her again. His face was gaunt, his raven-black hair trimmed tightly in perfect military fashion. His Imperial Ensign’s uniform clung to his frame with meticulous precision, as if tailored to perfection.

“Very good, Ensign,” Kemma replied, taking a final drag before snuffing the cig in the ashtray. She regarded her new aide a moment longer as he gathered the datapads into his suitcase. Handpicked by Moff Graush, Ensign Ernhard Kolinth was effective enough. Loyal, diligent, and obedient on the surface. The embodiment of Imperial precision. But Kemma knew he was also the Moff’s eyes and ears in her office. It was simply part of the game played within the Court of Governors of the Atrivis Sector.

A court that had once again been summoned to convene on the sector capital of Horuz, at the Moff’s pleasure, to discuss the war. Normally such meetings occurred via holo-connection or at the Moff’s palace when he desired a more personal touch. But today, the location was different. Kemma and her staff had barely stepped off their shuttle when they were informed by the Moff’s aide, Ensign Loring, that the day’s meeting would take place at one of the Moff’s illustrious hunts.

Kemma had heard rumors of these hunts, though she had never attended one. The thought of such an event, rife with decadence, sycophancy, and debauchery, hardly excited her. Nevertheless, she obliged and boarded the landspeeder that would take them nearly an hour into the dense, toxic, barb-filled, and humid jungles of Horuz.

When the vehicle finally came to a halt, Kemma slipped the cig container into her uniform pocket and steeled herself. She ensured her Governor’s insignia was secure, placed her cap atop her head, and slid her pale fingers into her leather gloves before stepping out. She inhaled one last breath of climate-controlled air before facing the oppressive humidity of Horuz.

Sweat formed instantly on her brow as her eyes adjusted to the brightness. She and her staff marched up the hill toward the Moff’s so-called hunting party. For someone accustomed to the austerity of wartime Nam’ta, the aristocratic spectacle was almost grotesque. The hilltop was alive with activity. Lavish tents, larger and better stocked than most hotel suites, dotted the crest. Tables overflowed with extravagant dishes. Attendants, slaves, servants, and courtiers moved fluidly among clusters of Imperial high society, each group engaged in its own web of pleasantries and politics.

Guests ranged from high-ranking military officials to sharply dressed nobles of Dromund Kaas, influential business magnates, scientists of the Imperial Science Bureau, and even Sith. Among the crowd, her eyes caught a familiar likeness.

Wilhuff Kaldon, younger brother of Ozil Kaldon and newly appointed Director of the Imperial Kaldon Industrial Group, sat among Imperial officers and corporate magnates. His new Imperial position had elevated him to a table closer to the Moff’s own. He offered Kemma nothing more than a passing nod as she moved past him. The hunt and camp itself truly a celebration of the strange social norms within the highest echelons of Imperial society. Even among the gathered masses, all in their own right important enough to be here by the personal invitation of Moff Graush, Kemma knew there was a clear divide to those with the eyes to see it.

The home planet and standing of Imperial Nobles could be distinguished by the knowing eye by the slightest variations in their otherwise highly fashionable attires. Marking them as haling from the Northern Territories or even distinguishably from the various worlds of the the Imperial Heartland itself.

The most prominent class of them seemingly of the Kaasian High Nobility of the Imperial Capital, to which kemma Knew, their host Maximilian Graush himself also belonged. Military officers mingled either among themselves or with the nobles and goverment officials from similar planetary backgrounds. There even seemed to be some divide between the Imperial Military officers depending on their belonging to the Imperial Nobility, or lack thereof. Not even military rank and prestige seeming to overcome the divide between family lines, sith blood ties and ancient ancestry that still reigned supreme among the highest echelons of Imperial Society. 

All of this was foreign to Kemma, an intricate and suffocating dance of etiquette, rivalry, and power. Centuries of scheming hid beneath laughter and fine wine, like a heavy fog that never lifted.

Even the faint shimmer of the ray shield surrounding the camp felt symbolic of this tension. Broad-shouldered Imperial commandos served as quiet sentries along the perimeter, the Moff’s personal fist reduced to background adornment. Little more than sentries lingering in the background of his aristocratic display that threatened to give Kemma a headache as she marched on into the center of the cesspit of decadence. Moff Maximilian Graush himself.

The Sector Moff of the Atrivis Sector was stood socialising at the far edge of camp, the cliffside that overlooked the clearing of the hunt’s killing field below. Ringed by several more commandos that stood nearby, acting as little more than glorified footmen as they held onto the hunting rifles of Graush’s esteemed guests. The Moff himself was surrounded by several shady-looking figures of the Imperial elite and military. Some she could instantly recognise as the other governors of the sector. The eldest of which, Governor Keersk of Imperial Gibbela, set his sunken gaze upon Kemma first, standing closest to the Moff.

If the Court of the Atrivis Sector’s governors was indeed little more than a kennel of dogs snarling desperately for the Moff’s favour, Governor Keersk was the one who barked the loudest. Old, entrenched and entirely too pleased with himself, he always sought to mount the dais above the rest of them. And over her in particular. Seeing Nam’ta and Kemma herself as little more than youthful upstarts and alien outsiders.

And so he cleared his throat to steel the Moff's attention away from his chat with an Imperial Admiral, setting his gaze upon Kemma as he spoke in his nasal tone. “Your Excellency, it seems Ralter has at last deigned to join us. How wonderful of you to finally arrive. We had been waiting...” He offered as he set his hatefilled eyes upon the younger Governor from over the bridge of his crooker nose.

Kemma did not acknowledge him, only offering the Moff a short bow as she came to a halt. Keeping her eyes fixed upon Moff Graush as she answered. “That would still be Governor Ralter to you, Governor Keersk… and I am certain the Moff can forgive my lateness. Such delays are inevitable when one’s system fights a war… and not only plays at one.” She hissed out, sparing only the briefest sideways glance to Keersk. Who parted his chapped lips to reply before he was interrupted by a raised, monstrous hand from the mountainous Moff who let out a bemused “Hah!”

His gibbs trembling like puddings as he silenced the display. The dealings of his governors amusing but no less unimportant. “Governor Ralter, my dear… how good it is to see you again.” Graush offered with a welcoming gesture of his arms, as an uncanny imitation of a smile tugged at his large lips. The rolls of his face gleamed with sweat from the Horuz heat and humidity, but it did not seem to bother the Moff in the slightest. His deep-set hate-filled black eyes shone with amusement at the day’s festivities.  “Indeed, your delay was expected… the duties of war can make latecomers of us all.” He said, voice thick as tar. “And I know how fond you are of overseeing things directly… yet I hope you find Ensign Kolinth a useful addition to your staff despite such?” He offered.

“He serves well enough, your Excellency…” Kemma replied, unflinching. “He is quick and efficient and never misses a detail in his reports. Something I am certain you know well.” She offered, her eyes meeting the Moff’s gaze. Her accusation veiled just thinly enough to be acceptable. And, it seemed, amusing.

The Moff simply chuckled, his cheeks rippling like pudding. “Quite right, Governor Ralter…” He offered before leaning forward subtly. “It is why I know as well as you that there are ample things for us to discuss today.” He offered, towering over the Governor of Imperial Nam’ta as his expression hardened.

But before another word could be exchanged, the tension was broken by the approach of today’s huntmaster: Colonel Demetrius Cabbel of the Alien Control Initiative, who Kemma knew all too well.

The Colonel had kept slightly off to the side, a finger on his earpiece as he gazed into the jungle with his binoculars, but had now approached directly, clearing his throat to grab the Moff’s attention. “Your Excellency. First patrol reports another flock of them should enter the killing field shortly.” News that seemed to make Graush once again perk up with enthusiasm as he smiled and let out an “Excellent!” Turning away from Kemma and the governors to the party itself, bringing his large hands to his lips to propel his booming voice over the festivities.

“Friends, to your rifles! There is good sport to be had!” He called out, as several individuals rose from their seats and moved to collect their hunting rifles from their retainers. Marching to the crest of the hill as Graush turned to his governors, shooing them away with little more than a stern glance. Kemma stepped back just a moment later than her more acquainted peers. Letting out a soft sigh as she set her eyes back to Moff Graush. Watching on as the Moff snapped his fingers.

A broad-framed commando that lingered nearby holding Graush’s rifle sprang into action at once. Moving forward to offer Graush the large rifle before he turned on his axis and knelt down into the dirt before Graush. The soldier angling his back forward, letting Graush rest his rifle upon his shoulders. The Imperial commando’s years of training culminating in service as a human bipod. A role, Kemma noted, he had fulfilled countless times today during this hunt based on the dried mud staining his knee pads.

Moff Graush popped his aim-assisting reticle back in front of his eyes as he rested the weapon on the soldier’s right shoulder and steadied his aim. Taking a deep breath as he adjusted his footing alongside other members partaking in the hunt. The rest of the nobles joined to spectate with bated breath alongside the cluster of governors as they waited in silence.

The silence lingered for some time, broken only by the occasional cough, before the familiar snarls and barks of Akk Dogs sounded from the jungle below. Soft at first, then ever closer. Closing in toward the clearing the hill was situated above, a rumbling in the brush moving right to left as they drove their prey forwards. Anticipation building. Kemma could not help but look to the clearing as well, waiting the final moments before… there. The first… prey? Would emerge from the dense, thorny shrubbery.

Kemma’s eyes went wide with shock as they appeared to be not beasts, but sentients! Humanoid aliens of all shapes, species and sizes appearing from the brush. Their clothes and skin torn and tattered by the barbs and thorns of Horuz’s inhospitable jungle as they darted into the clearing like scared hares. The Akk Dogs close on their heels when suddenly… BLAM. The first shot rang out through the clearing. Striking one of the aliens, a young Rodian, cleanly in the torso as he collapsed there in the grass.

A hail of bolts from the mound followed. The assembled line of nobility, moguls and officers alike reveling in the barbaric pleasantry as they fired away. Kemma watched on in horror as they picked off the aliens that darted across the field. Those who stopped were caught by the hunting hounds that chased them, the Akks tearing them to pieces.

The hounds’ Imperial handlers halted by the edge of the jungle clearing. Waiting. Blasters trained on the running prey, picking off any that were missed by the hunting party before they could disappear into the opposite treeline. Ensuring all died there in the killing field.

It was a massacre. One that made Ralter’s stomach twist and turn in her gut. And one the gathered masses seemed to delight in.

Kemma watched, sickened, as the clearing became a slaughter pit. Around her, the crowd cheered. The Empire’s finest; its elite, its masters, its nobles, basked in the pleasure of killing. And all she could do was stand there and bear witness...]]> Part I:

The glow of the cig rendered the speeder’s tinted viewport briefly opaque as Kemma took another drag, the dimmed view of the thorny brushes whipping past giving way to the governor of Nam’ta’s own reflection. Dark circles ringed her deep-set emerald eyes, and her once vibrant orange hair, now streaked with silvery gray at the edges, was tied into a bun above her head. For a moment, Kemma barely recognized the woman staring back at her, so worn down by the pressures of recent years, yet the thought faded as the reflection was obscured by a soft plume of smoke. Her attention shifted from the window as the speeder door slid open with a mechanical hiss.

“We’ll be arriving shortly, Governor. I took the liberty of confirming our arrival with the Moff’s staff,” Ensign Ernhard announced with his distinct Kaasian accent, offering a curt bow before seating himself across from her again. His face was gaunt, his raven-black hair trimmed tightly in perfect military fashion. His Imperial Ensign’s uniform clung to his frame with meticulous precision, as if tailored to perfection.

“Very good, Ensign,” Kemma replied, taking a final drag before snuffing the cig in the ashtray. She regarded her new aide a moment longer as he gathered the datapads into his suitcase. Handpicked by Moff Graush, Ensign Ernhard Kolinth was effective enough. Loyal, diligent, and obedient on the surface. The embodiment of Imperial precision. But Kemma knew he was also the Moff’s eyes and ears in her office. It was simply part of the game played within the Court of Governors of the Atrivis Sector.

A court that had once again been summoned to convene on the sector capital of Horuz, at the Moff’s pleasure, to discuss the war. Normally such meetings occurred via holo-connection or at the Moff’s palace when he desired a more personal touch. But today, the location was different. Kemma and her staff had barely stepped off their shuttle when they were informed by the Moff’s aide, Ensign Loring, that the day’s meeting would take place at one of the Moff’s illustrious hunts.

Kemma had heard rumors of these hunts, though she had never attended one. The thought of such an event, rife with decadence, sycophancy, and debauchery, hardly excited her. Nevertheless, she obliged and boarded the landspeeder that would take them nearly an hour into the dense, toxic, barb-filled, and humid jungles of Horuz.

When the vehicle finally came to a halt, Kemma slipped the cig container into her uniform pocket and steeled herself. She ensured her Governor’s insignia was secure, placed her cap atop her head, and slid her pale fingers into her leather gloves before stepping out. She inhaled one last breath of climate-controlled air before facing the oppressive humidity of Horuz.

Sweat formed instantly on her brow as her eyes adjusted to the brightness. She and her staff marched up the hill toward the Moff’s so-called hunting party. For someone accustomed to the austerity of wartime Nam’ta, the aristocratic spectacle was almost grotesque. The hilltop was alive with activity. Lavish tents, larger and better stocked than most hotel suites, dotted the crest. Tables overflowed with extravagant dishes. Attendants, slaves, servants, and courtiers moved fluidly among clusters of Imperial high society, each group engaged in its own web of pleasantries and politics.

Guests ranged from high-ranking military officials to sharply dressed nobles of Dromund Kaas, influential business magnates, scientists of the Imperial Science Bureau, and even Sith. Among the crowd, her eyes caught a familiar likeness.

Wilhuff Kaldon, younger brother of Ozil Kaldon and newly appointed Director of the Imperial Kaldon Industrial Group, sat among Imperial officers and corporate magnates. His new Imperial position had elevated him to a table closer to the Moff’s own. He offered Kemma nothing more than a passing nod as she moved past him. The hunt and camp itself truly a celebration of the strange social norms within the highest echelons of Imperial society. Even among the gathered masses, all in their own right important enough to be here by the personal invitation of Moff Graush, Kemma knew there was a clear divide to those with the eyes to see it.

The home planet and standing of Imperial Nobles could be distinguished by the knowing eye by the slightest variations in their otherwise highly fashionable attires. Marking them as haling from the Northern Territories or even distinguishably from the various worlds of the the Imperial Heartland itself.

The most prominent class of them seemingly of the Kaasian High Nobility of the Imperial Capital, to which kemma Knew, their host Maximilian Graush himself also belonged. Military officers mingled either among themselves or with the nobles and goverment officials from similar planetary backgrounds. There even seemed to be some divide between the Imperial Military officers depending on their belonging to the Imperial Nobility, or lack thereof. Not even military rank and prestige seeming to overcome the divide between family lines, sith blood ties and ancient ancestry that still reigned supreme among the highest echelons of Imperial Society. 

All of this was foreign to Kemma, an intricate and suffocating dance of etiquette, rivalry, and power. Centuries of scheming hid beneath laughter and fine wine, like a heavy fog that never lifted.

Even the faint shimmer of the ray shield surrounding the camp felt symbolic of this tension. Broad-shouldered Imperial commandos served as quiet sentries along the perimeter, the Moff’s personal fist reduced to background adornment. Little more than sentries lingering in the background of his aristocratic display that threatened to give Kemma a headache as she marched on into the center of the cesspit of decadence. Moff Maximilian Graush himself.

The Sector Moff of the Atrivis Sector was stood socialising at the far edge of camp, the cliffside that overlooked the clearing of the hunt’s killing field below. Ringed by several more commandos that stood nearby, acting as little more than glorified footmen as they held onto the hunting rifles of Graush’s esteemed guests. The Moff himself was surrounded by several shady-looking figures of the Imperial elite and military. Some she could instantly recognise as the other governors of the sector. The eldest of which, Governor Keersk of Imperial Gibbela, set his sunken gaze upon Kemma first, standing closest to the Moff.

If the Court of the Atrivis Sector’s governors was indeed little more than a kennel of dogs snarling desperately for the Moff’s favour, Governor Keersk was the one who barked the loudest. Old, entrenched and entirely too pleased with himself, he always sought to mount the dais above the rest of them. And over her in particular. Seeing Nam’ta and Kemma herself as little more than youthful upstarts and alien outsiders.

And so he cleared his throat to steel the Moff's attention away from his chat with an Imperial Admiral, setting his gaze upon Kemma as he spoke in his nasal tone. “Your Excellency, it seems Ralter has at last deigned to join us. How wonderful of you to finally arrive. We had been waiting...” He offered as he set his hatefilled eyes upon the younger Governor from over the bridge of his crooker nose.

Kemma did not acknowledge him, only offering the Moff a short bow as she came to a halt. Keeping her eyes fixed upon Moff Graush as she answered. “That would still be Governor Ralter to you, Governor Keersk… and I am certain the Moff can forgive my lateness. Such delays are inevitable when one’s system fights a war… and not only plays at one.” She hissed out, sparing only the briefest sideways glance to Keersk. Who parted his chapped lips to reply before he was interrupted by a raised, monstrous hand from the mountainous Moff who let out a bemused “Hah!”

His gibbs trembling like puddings as he silenced the display. The dealings of his governors amusing but no less unimportant. “Governor Ralter, my dear… how good it is to see you again.” Graush offered with a welcoming gesture of his arms, as an uncanny imitation of a smile tugged at his large lips. The rolls of his face gleamed with sweat from the Horuz heat and humidity, but it did not seem to bother the Moff in the slightest. His deep-set hate-filled black eyes shone with amusement at the day’s festivities.  “Indeed, your delay was expected… the duties of war can make latecomers of us all.” He said, voice thick as tar. “And I know how fond you are of overseeing things directly… yet I hope you find Ensign Kolinth a useful addition to your staff despite such?” He offered.

“He serves well enough, your Excellency…” Kemma replied, unflinching. “He is quick and efficient and never misses a detail in his reports. Something I am certain you know well.” She offered, her eyes meeting the Moff’s gaze. Her accusation veiled just thinly enough to be acceptable. And, it seemed, amusing.

The Moff simply chuckled, his cheeks rippling like pudding. “Quite right, Governor Ralter…” He offered before leaning forward subtly. “It is why I know as well as you that there are ample things for us to discuss today.” He offered, towering over the Governor of Imperial Nam’ta as his expression hardened.

But before another word could be exchanged, the tension was broken by the approach of today’s huntmaster: Colonel Demetrius Cabbel of the Alien Control Initiative, who Kemma knew all too well.

The Colonel had kept slightly off to the side, a finger on his earpiece as he gazed into the jungle with his binoculars, but had now approached directly, clearing his throat to grab the Moff’s attention. “Your Excellency. First patrol reports another flock of them should enter the killing field shortly.” News that seemed to make Graush once again perk up with enthusiasm as he smiled and let out an “Excellent!” Turning away from Kemma and the governors to the party itself, bringing his large hands to his lips to propel his booming voice over the festivities.

“Friends, to your rifles! There is good sport to be had!” He called out, as several individuals rose from their seats and moved to collect their hunting rifles from their retainers. Marching to the crest of the hill as Graush turned to his governors, shooing them away with little more than a stern glance. Kemma stepped back just a moment later than her more acquainted peers. Letting out a soft sigh as she set her eyes back to Moff Graush. Watching on as the Moff snapped his fingers.

A broad-framed commando that lingered nearby holding Graush’s rifle sprang into action at once. Moving forward to offer Graush the large rifle before he turned on his axis and knelt down into the dirt before Graush. The soldier angling his back forward, letting Graush rest his rifle upon his shoulders. The Imperial commando’s years of training culminating in service as a human bipod. A role, Kemma noted, he had fulfilled countless times today during this hunt based on the dried mud staining his knee pads.

Moff Graush popped his aim-assisting reticle back in front of his eyes as he rested the weapon on the soldier’s right shoulder and steadied his aim. Taking a deep breath as he adjusted his footing alongside other members partaking in the hunt. The rest of the nobles joined to spectate with bated breath alongside the cluster of governors as they waited in silence.

The silence lingered for some time, broken only by the occasional cough, before the familiar snarls and barks of Akk Dogs sounded from the jungle below. Soft at first, then ever closer. Closing in toward the clearing the hill was situated above, a rumbling in the brush moving right to left as they drove their prey forwards. Anticipation building. Kemma could not help but look to the clearing as well, waiting the final moments before… there. The first… prey? Would emerge from the dense, thorny shrubbery.

Kemma’s eyes went wide with shock as they appeared to be not beasts, but sentients! Humanoid aliens of all shapes, species and sizes appearing from the brush. Their clothes and skin torn and tattered by the barbs and thorns of Horuz’s inhospitable jungle as they darted into the clearing like scared hares. The Akk Dogs close on their heels when suddenly… BLAM. The first shot rang out through the clearing. Striking one of the aliens, a young Rodian, cleanly in the torso as he collapsed there in the grass.

A hail of bolts from the mound followed. The assembled line of nobility, moguls and officers alike reveling in the barbaric pleasantry as they fired away. Kemma watched on in horror as they picked off the aliens that darted across the field. Those who stopped were caught by the hunting hounds that chased them, the Akks tearing them to pieces.

The hounds’ Imperial handlers halted by the edge of the jungle clearing. Waiting. Blasters trained on the running prey, picking off any that were missed by the hunting party before they could disappear into the opposite treeline. Ensuring all died there in the killing field.

It was a massacre. One that made Ralter’s stomach twist and turn in her gut. And one the gathered masses seemed to delight in.

Kemma watched, sickened, as the clearing became a slaughter pit. Around her, the crowd cheered. The Empire’s finest; its elite, its masters, its nobles, basked in the pleasure of killing. And all she could do was stand there and bear witness...]]> <![CDATA[A Pilgrim's Return]]> https://www.horuset.com/showthread.php?tid=1453 Sun, 30 Nov 2025 19:39:08 +0000 Gaybam]]> https://www.horuset.com/showthread.php?tid=1453 The storm over Dromund Kaas had been building for hours, thick and heavy, like a bruise swelling across the sky. Lightning spidered through the clouds—brief, violent flashes that turned the Horuset estate into a landscape of stark angles and long shadows.


The shuttle lurched through that storm like a wounded animal struggling toward familiar ground.

It didn’t descend with grace. It couldn’t. 
Instead it limped—listing sideways, engines coughing smoke, hull shuddering with every gust of wind. One stabilizer dragged a ragged trail of sparks as it scraped the air, refusing to release the vessel until the final approach forced it down.

The engines screamed - or tried to, at least, only offering a long, tortured whine - and then cut.

The ship hit the landing pad not with a crash, but with the heavy, miserable groan of something that had held itself together for far too long. It sank into the duracrete beneath, as if the harsh stone were the softest embrace it had felt in the longest of times.

Smoke curled from vents.
Panels hung loose.
The whole frame vibrated like a creature taking its last breath.

Then it went quiet.
The kind of quiet that feels like relief.

For a time, nothing moved.

Kaas’ rains pattered against the hull, breaking the silence. Wind tugged at torn plating. A single external light flickered, guttered, then died.

At last, the side ramp bucked inward, catching, grinding, then forcing itself open with a low metallic snarl. The air that poured out was thick with sweat, blood, stale heat, and the harsh metallic bite of long-burnt fuel.

Saarkha stepped into the storm.

She looked carved from the same brutality as the thunder rolling overhead.

Her robes were ruined—charred at the edges, ripped at the seams, soaked through with dried blood that rain slowly coaxed back into life. Ash clung to her skin in uneven patches, caught in the creases of her knuckles and the hollows of her collarbones. Her forearms were wrapped in filthy, makeshift bandages, dark with old and new stains that the downpour only partially washed away.

Every burn, every cut, every bruise stood stark beneath the dim landing lights. Some wounds were crude—stitched in the field, jagged and ugly. Others looked days old, barely healed, cracked open again by the strain of the journey.

She moved stiffly at first, not from weakness, but from the kind of deep ache that lived in the bones—earned through repetition, endurance, and suffering. The storm plastered her hair across her face, revealing more hollow cheekbones, a sharper jaw, eyes sunken from sleepless nights and too many vigils under foreign skies.

Five worlds had taken their tribute.

They had not taken her.

She descended the ramp slowly, each step measured, each footfall leaving behind a smear of diluted blood that rainwater chased toward the cracks in the stone. The air around her carried the scent of journeys that demanded more than strength—sacrifice clung to her like a second skin.

Her shuttle hissed behind her—metal expanding, coolant venting, engines cooling for the last time. It sagged on its struts, exhausted, as if it had been waiting for her to disembark before allowing itself to die.

She did not look back.

Saarkha crossed the courtyard without urgency, without hesitation, without the slightest tremor of doubt. The estate’s lights cast her in pale gold and sharp, onyx shadow, shaping her into something half-statue, half-priestess. Rain carved lines down her face, mixing with soot, blood, and filth until it looked like warpaint being washed away by degrees.

She reached the main steps.
Ascended.
Then vanished into the estate’s darkened threshold.

The storm swallowed her silhouette, thunder rolling after her like a closing curtain.

Far behind her, the shuttle gave one last settling groan—metal collapsing inward, systems finally giving out now that their duty was done.

And in the courtyard’s heavy silence, marked only by rain and scorched stone, one truth settled like an omen:

The Bloodwrought had returned.

.jpeg   image0.jpeg (Size: 56.62 KB / Downloads: 7) ]]> The storm over Dromund Kaas had been building for hours, thick and heavy, like a bruise swelling across the sky. Lightning spidered through the clouds—brief, violent flashes that turned the Horuset estate into a landscape of stark angles and long shadows.


The shuttle lurched through that storm like a wounded animal struggling toward familiar ground.

It didn’t descend with grace. It couldn’t. 
Instead it limped—listing sideways, engines coughing smoke, hull shuddering with every gust of wind. One stabilizer dragged a ragged trail of sparks as it scraped the air, refusing to release the vessel until the final approach forced it down.

The engines screamed - or tried to, at least, only offering a long, tortured whine - and then cut.

The ship hit the landing pad not with a crash, but with the heavy, miserable groan of something that had held itself together for far too long. It sank into the duracrete beneath, as if the harsh stone were the softest embrace it had felt in the longest of times.

Smoke curled from vents.
Panels hung loose.
The whole frame vibrated like a creature taking its last breath.

Then it went quiet.
The kind of quiet that feels like relief.

For a time, nothing moved.

Kaas’ rains pattered against the hull, breaking the silence. Wind tugged at torn plating. A single external light flickered, guttered, then died.

At last, the side ramp bucked inward, catching, grinding, then forcing itself open with a low metallic snarl. The air that poured out was thick with sweat, blood, stale heat, and the harsh metallic bite of long-burnt fuel.

Saarkha stepped into the storm.

She looked carved from the same brutality as the thunder rolling overhead.

Her robes were ruined—charred at the edges, ripped at the seams, soaked through with dried blood that rain slowly coaxed back into life. Ash clung to her skin in uneven patches, caught in the creases of her knuckles and the hollows of her collarbones. Her forearms were wrapped in filthy, makeshift bandages, dark with old and new stains that the downpour only partially washed away.

Every burn, every cut, every bruise stood stark beneath the dim landing lights. Some wounds were crude—stitched in the field, jagged and ugly. Others looked days old, barely healed, cracked open again by the strain of the journey.

She moved stiffly at first, not from weakness, but from the kind of deep ache that lived in the bones—earned through repetition, endurance, and suffering. The storm plastered her hair across her face, revealing more hollow cheekbones, a sharper jaw, eyes sunken from sleepless nights and too many vigils under foreign skies.

Five worlds had taken their tribute.

They had not taken her.

She descended the ramp slowly, each step measured, each footfall leaving behind a smear of diluted blood that rainwater chased toward the cracks in the stone. The air around her carried the scent of journeys that demanded more than strength—sacrifice clung to her like a second skin.

Her shuttle hissed behind her—metal expanding, coolant venting, engines cooling for the last time. It sagged on its struts, exhausted, as if it had been waiting for her to disembark before allowing itself to die.

She did not look back.

Saarkha crossed the courtyard without urgency, without hesitation, without the slightest tremor of doubt. The estate’s lights cast her in pale gold and sharp, onyx shadow, shaping her into something half-statue, half-priestess. Rain carved lines down her face, mixing with soot, blood, and filth until it looked like warpaint being washed away by degrees.

She reached the main steps.
Ascended.
Then vanished into the estate’s darkened threshold.

The storm swallowed her silhouette, thunder rolling after her like a closing curtain.

Far behind her, the shuttle gave one last settling groan—metal collapsing inward, systems finally giving out now that their duty was done.

And in the courtyard’s heavy silence, marked only by rain and scorched stone, one truth settled like an omen:

The Bloodwrought had returned.

.jpeg   image0.jpeg (Size: 56.62 KB / Downloads: 7) ]]> <![CDATA[Stand, Worm!]]> https://www.horuset.com/showthread.php?tid=1436 Wed, 22 Oct 2025 17:50:24 +0000 Krassus Horuset]]> https://www.horuset.com/showthread.php?tid=1436 thud that shook the rivets in his  Warrior's armor. A heartbeat later, he was sent crashing into the dirt with a crunch that instantly robbed the air from his lungs.  He barely managed not to bisect himself on his own blade as it threatened to tumble from his grasp. The blaster fire outside became a distant echo, barely audible over the sharp ringing in his ears.
The young Horuset warrior left laying, gasping for air. Struggling to move. To breathe. The world narrowed around him.

It is then she appeared above him. 

The armored faceplate of Daxze loomed over him, her presence in the Force reeking of rot, of corruption, of the draining void of the Dark Side. Her attempt to Force Drain their enemy; having done little else than drain her of her last semblance of sanity. The mania in her voice mirrored only by the glint of madness in her eyes, barely visible behind the visor. “Get up, Krassssusss! Run!” she hissed, voice fractured, lisping, and unhinged; her grasp on Basic deteriorating almost as quickly as her grip on sanity.

Then she was gone. Bolting for the exit. Cloak whipping behind her as she disappeared from Krassus vision. His head pounding like a drum as the mine shaft spun.

"Krassus, is it?"   The Jedi's voice offered from deeper inside the cavern. Measured, calm, amused. The Radiant glow of his lightsaber lit the mineshaft with a tranquil, almost sacred light as he continued his leiusurely stroll towards the Sith. Pale skin glowing faintly in the illumination, white eyes creased in a kindly smile that did not belong on a battlefield.

He bowed, blade in hand, moving with theatrical grace.

"Well, young Krassus, what a pleasure it is to make your acquaintance." He spoke. His voice was gentle. Almost sincere. The Light flowed from him like a breeze of spring wind. Warm, clean, soft. Like a gentle breeze rolling through a calm meadow. A faint hint of lovely flowers and freshly cut grass. It sickened Krassus. The serenity, the confident, self-assured peace oozing off him like a perfume. Unbearable in its arrogance. The Light Side flowed around the jedi like a storm in bloom as he gathered the Force around himself once more.

Krassus pressed his fist into the dirt, pushing himself up. Biting through the burning pain in his left Thigh. The Shiim wound screaming with pain with each excruciating movement. He could barely put weight on it. But still, he rose. One knee. Then both feet. Saber in hand. Breath ragged. Sliding his right leg behind his left as he assumed his Djem So stance.

The Jedi paused his advance, but did not raise his own blade. "You have real spirit, young Krassus.... Yet is seems your allies do not share it." The Jedi offered, bowing again. Smiling as if they were exchanging pleasantries at a dinner. Sliding one leg behind the other as he continued. "It would be wise  of you to surrender, young Krassus. I do not believe you are cut out for this fight... To be Sith. Lay down your weapon, my friend. Come with me. Let us discuss your... Redemption, hmm?" He extended his off-hand, lowering his defenses, as if he had already won. The very air swirling around him like a building hurricane. 

The insult in the gesture wasn't loud, nor crude.
But it was the greatest unsult a warrior could suffer: an attempt to be ignored.
Not Challenged. Not defeated.
Dismissed.

The Jedi saw not a Sith. Not a warrior. Not an Enemy.
Only a child in need of Mercy.

It disgusted Krassus to his core. He had no need for it. He felt it all snap. The mask of the Stoic warrior shattering as the Dark Side surged into him like floodwaters through a broken dam. A tidal swell of rage washing over him as tears rushed down his sweat and blood caked cheeks beneath his mask. He screamed, a guttural roar that echoed through the mine as the young Sith exploded outwards like the solar winds of the Horuset sun. 

Augmentation doing what it could to compensate for the missing muscle mass in his thigh. Surging forward, saber drawn. A blur of crimson and hatred as he crashed into the Jedi's defences. Yet it did him little good.

The Jedi hardly blinked. The parry; elegant, effortless. Krassus' saber knocked from his hand. Another Shiim, a streak of smoltering orange across his back. A flash, a lesson as the Jedi effortlessly moved past him.

Krassus barely staying upright. Stumbling forwards before he suddenly trips and falls. Not over his own feet. But over the corpse of Lord Teius. The mud beneath his hands twisting into stone tiles. The stone tiles of the Horuset Throne room. The air thick with the scorched scent of brimstone.

Smoke curling into the air from the smoldering hole in his father's chest. Eyes all around him in the shadows. The jedi's face towering over him morphing into the equally pale visage of Lord Kelsa's face, half exposed from his ruined helmet. The world around Krassus fading into shadow as he locks eyes with the cold, dead eyes of his father's corpse. Still twisted in his skull with the same glare. The same disdain. 

And then, impossible, the eyes stirred. Breath catching in Krassus' throat as the corpse of Lord Teius rose. Not just from the dead, but above him. To tower over Krassus as it might have done once when he was but a child in the Horuset Spire. Its face twisted, lips drawn back in a grimacing snarl as it reeled back an iron fist.

Krassus hadn't even the time to raise his arms to cover his face. 

The blow struck like a hammer.

KRassus falling hard with his back onto the gleaming, polished floors of the Horuset Spire's training hall. The Durasteel cold beneath him. The taste of blood in his mouth as his small hands scrape across the floor in search of the the wooden training blade he had dropped. Heat swelling in his swollen lips as a trickle of dark blood makes its way down his face from the gash in them.

"Again!" The Armsman's voice echoed around the ring. As Krassus got back to his feet as his opponent backed away and reformed their Shii-Cho stance. The rest of the Children watching from outside the ring. Seranaus scared, Xulia eager to seem interested, Kromus amused. All awaiting their turn.

Krassus' gaze falling onto his opponent. The tall lanky frame of his elder brother..  Krassus recognised him instantly even if the long years since his brother's death had twisted his face into a patchwork of forgotten features. Morphing, blurred by time, but unmistakably Valeus Horuset.

Valeus was several years Krassus' elder; soon to be sent off to the Academy if word around the spire was to be believed. But he had always preferred his books, scrolls and long studies over his bladework. And it had given him a matching bookish disposition. 

And so the armsman deemed it a not entirely unfair match. Pitting the more martial younger brother against the eldest more often than not. 
Krassus cherished it really, even if he could never hope to match the reach of Valeus' blade. It was after all one of the only times he actually got to spend time with his brother. 

And so Krassus nodded, sliding his dominant foot behind the other with practiced precision. Deliving into his fledgling mastery of the Dark Side. The world narrowing around him until his focus was on nothing else but Valeus and the spar. Pushing himself forwards with a rush. Stick crashing against stick as the two sparred.

High. Low. Parry. Riposte. Swing. Jab. A step back. A lunge forwards! High. Low. An opening! No? A feint!

A blow of Valeus' stick found his right hand. Bruising his knuckles as Krassus almost loses his grasp on his blade. A following low sweep. Krassus tried to avoid it. Tumbling backwards before the boy tripped over his own footing. Hitting the floor with a soft thud; Valeus' blade follows him down. Pausing mere inches from his face.

"Yield! I yield!" Krassus said. Letting his stick roll from his grasp as he raised his arms in surrender.

"KRASSUS!" Lord Teius' voice boomed like thunder through the hall. Everything stopped. Even the air froze in place as a shakey breath caught in Krassus' throat. A wave of cold Sweat rolling down his back as his eyes go wide. Heart pounding in his chest.

He had been so focused on his on the spar he hadn't even noticed that the armsman has slinked away and fallen to a knee. Hadn't noticed the arrival of his father. Lord Teius stormed in, the Sith Lord's presence flaring outwards like an incinerating burst of hellish fire and brimstone spewed out from the depths of the Horuset suns's hateful core. Rage incarnate as the armored behemoth clenched his hands into fists. Every step judgement manifest.

"WHAT IN THE EMPEROR'S NAME DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING, YOU USELESS VERMIN!" 

Krassus trembled on hands and knees. "I-I... M-my Lord, I-"

"He was beaten," Valeus offered. "I won." 

"No," Teius growled, cutting him off. Burning eyes locked on Krassus. "He yielded." The Lord corrected. The word was spat like poison. With one motion he yanked Seranaus up from his knees by the scruff of his neck. Left hand on the boy's neck, the other on his stick-blade.

A tug seeing them separated. The latter now finding it's way into the Lord's vice like grasp, as his other hand discarded the boy like trash. Throwing Seranaus hard to the ground in the wake of his passing as he stormed into the training pit.

Their Lord Father wrath incarnate as the Dark Side swelled with him. The first strike, like a blur, struck Valeus on the side of his head. Almost knocking his eyes out of their sockets as the wood crashed into his skull; sending the eldest son sprawling on the floor.

"And the fact that you accepted it makes you just as weak." The Lord declared as he knelt down over Valeus; an armored fist striking down into his chest. Driving the air from his lungs before Lord Teius unfurled his fingers; clawed digits digging into the fabric of Valeus' shirt as the Sith Lord lifted him bodily and hurled him from the ring like refuse. 

The Armsman stopping Valeus' flopping and rolling body with his right foot. 

"Take him." The Lord barked. The armsman obeyed. Bowing his bald head, keeping his gaze averted as he dragged Valeus from the hall. The rest of the children following them out like a scattering of ducks. 

Now it was only Teius and Krassus.

"Stand, Worm!"

Krassus didn't move fast enough. A clawed fist seized his crimson hair, dragging him upright as his scalp screamed in protest. 

A tug of the force saw the dropped training blade find Teius' palm. The Sith Lord pressing it hard against his son's chest.

"No son of mine will yield so meekly! No would-be Sith Warrior of the Horuset blood! You will fight until you no longer can. You do not stop until I say you are done. Opening stance, Shii-cho!" He demanded, letting the crying, trembling boy slide his right leg behind the other as he waited. 

Then it began. 

The Sith Lord burst forward, like a Tukata let of its leash. Blow after blow. Krassus' training blade batted aside in an instant. The wood in Lord Teius' grasp almost splintering under the force behind the strike. Then came another, and another swing. Blow after blow. To his back. His Arms. His ribs.
An armored fist cracked into his left eye socket, stars exploded in his vision. Blood ran down his cheek as Krassus was sent sprawling. 

The boy gasping for breath, barely conscious.

"GET. UP."

The Force snared around him like tendrils, yanking him into the air. Tears streemed freely now, mixing with blood as Krassus was thrown down onto his knees. The stick blade pressed  into him again. 

"OPENING STANCE, SHII-CHO!" 

Krassus obeyed.

Another beatdown.
Fists. Fury. Spite. 
Lord Teius swung the blade so hard that the wood cracked and splintered in his grasp, sending wood shavings sprawling across the ring. He had no further use for it. He throttled Krassus onto the ground and wailed down on his swollen, red face with his fists. Again, and again. Each blow sending the Sith Lord's own son crashing in and out of consciousness. 

The world spinning as the command came again.

"GET. UP."

He did. 

Barely standing. Face split open. A gargled wheeze blowing bubbled of dark blood between his lips as he just barely dragged his dominant foot behind the other. Teius was upon him not a moment later.

Strike after strike. 

A snap.
A wet, crushing crack.
His sword arm broken. As Lord Teius threw him to the ground and stomped down on his chest. Pinning him. Canting his head offset as he looked down at his son. Not a shred of love behind his eyes. Cold, calculating. Judging. Deeming Krassus, at last, unable to continue to fight.

"Only now are you defeated. I will not have you -yield- for less." He said. Turning. The lesson ended.

Krassus lay still. Blood in his mouth. His face almost split in half. breath shallow. Heart pounding. The Shadows rise around him, drowning out the world until there is nothing but his father. His back turning towards him. The shape of him. It arose nothing but rage. For once, Krassus wasn't afraid anymore. The Dark Side rose within his broken body as he moved. Once twice. Leveraging the momentum of his body to flip himself onto his side with a wet, bloody thud.

Then another swing saw him move onto his chest. Fingers trembling. One hand found the stick he had long since dropped. He took it. Pushed it into the ground with a blood gurgling groan of strain. He pushed. 

He fell. 

Face first in the blood pooling beneath him. 

He pushed again. And Again. On his knees. One knee. Then both feet.

He stood. Barely Resting his full weight onto the stick. 

Teius halted. Then turned. A deep, bone-grinding groan. Half roar, half laugh. The only approval Krassus would ever earn as he changed his course. Turning back to Krassus. Towering over the broken boy. Reeling back his iron fist.

A final blow. Clean, brutal. Two punches. One clean to his solar plexus; the other an upper cut to his nose.

Darkness claimed him.

Krassus awoke in his bed in the medbay of the Horuset estate. Reaching out with his left hand; he sees only the robotic steel of his cybernetic replacement. Himself once more. Chest heaving, cold sweat clinging to his skin as he sits up. Covered in kolto-patches on his shrapnel wounds. 
The taste of blood in his mouth, but no wound.
Only memory.

Ignoring the protests of the medical droid he pushes himself out of bed and finds the wash basin. Letting the water run; he splashes it into his face. Yet as he looks up into the mirror he sees only his father's scowl staring back at him, etched into his own face.

He grits his teeth; fire burning behind his crimson gaze as he reels back his fist. Slamming it into the mirror; the reflective surface shattering beneath the weight of the blow.]]> thud that shook the rivets in his  Warrior's armor. A heartbeat later, he was sent crashing into the dirt with a crunch that instantly robbed the air from his lungs.  He barely managed not to bisect himself on his own blade as it threatened to tumble from his grasp. The blaster fire outside became a distant echo, barely audible over the sharp ringing in his ears.
The young Horuset warrior left laying, gasping for air. Struggling to move. To breathe. The world narrowed around him.

It is then she appeared above him. 

The armored faceplate of Daxze loomed over him, her presence in the Force reeking of rot, of corruption, of the draining void of the Dark Side. Her attempt to Force Drain their enemy; having done little else than drain her of her last semblance of sanity. The mania in her voice mirrored only by the glint of madness in her eyes, barely visible behind the visor. “Get up, Krassssusss! Run!” she hissed, voice fractured, lisping, and unhinged; her grasp on Basic deteriorating almost as quickly as her grip on sanity.

Then she was gone. Bolting for the exit. Cloak whipping behind her as she disappeared from Krassus vision. His head pounding like a drum as the mine shaft spun.

"Krassus, is it?"   The Jedi's voice offered from deeper inside the cavern. Measured, calm, amused. The Radiant glow of his lightsaber lit the mineshaft with a tranquil, almost sacred light as he continued his leiusurely stroll towards the Sith. Pale skin glowing faintly in the illumination, white eyes creased in a kindly smile that did not belong on a battlefield.

He bowed, blade in hand, moving with theatrical grace.

"Well, young Krassus, what a pleasure it is to make your acquaintance." He spoke. His voice was gentle. Almost sincere. The Light flowed from him like a breeze of spring wind. Warm, clean, soft. Like a gentle breeze rolling through a calm meadow. A faint hint of lovely flowers and freshly cut grass. It sickened Krassus. The serenity, the confident, self-assured peace oozing off him like a perfume. Unbearable in its arrogance. The Light Side flowed around the jedi like a storm in bloom as he gathered the Force around himself once more.

Krassus pressed his fist into the dirt, pushing himself up. Biting through the burning pain in his left Thigh. The Shiim wound screaming with pain with each excruciating movement. He could barely put weight on it. But still, he rose. One knee. Then both feet. Saber in hand. Breath ragged. Sliding his right leg behind his left as he assumed his Djem So stance.

The Jedi paused his advance, but did not raise his own blade. "You have real spirit, young Krassus.... Yet is seems your allies do not share it." The Jedi offered, bowing again. Smiling as if they were exchanging pleasantries at a dinner. Sliding one leg behind the other as he continued. "It would be wise  of you to surrender, young Krassus. I do not believe you are cut out for this fight... To be Sith. Lay down your weapon, my friend. Come with me. Let us discuss your... Redemption, hmm?" He extended his off-hand, lowering his defenses, as if he had already won. The very air swirling around him like a building hurricane. 

The insult in the gesture wasn't loud, nor crude.
But it was the greatest unsult a warrior could suffer: an attempt to be ignored.
Not Challenged. Not defeated.
Dismissed.

The Jedi saw not a Sith. Not a warrior. Not an Enemy.
Only a child in need of Mercy.

It disgusted Krassus to his core. He had no need for it. He felt it all snap. The mask of the Stoic warrior shattering as the Dark Side surged into him like floodwaters through a broken dam. A tidal swell of rage washing over him as tears rushed down his sweat and blood caked cheeks beneath his mask. He screamed, a guttural roar that echoed through the mine as the young Sith exploded outwards like the solar winds of the Horuset sun. 

Augmentation doing what it could to compensate for the missing muscle mass in his thigh. Surging forward, saber drawn. A blur of crimson and hatred as he crashed into the Jedi's defences. Yet it did him little good.

The Jedi hardly blinked. The parry; elegant, effortless. Krassus' saber knocked from his hand. Another Shiim, a streak of smoltering orange across his back. A flash, a lesson as the Jedi effortlessly moved past him.

Krassus barely staying upright. Stumbling forwards before he suddenly trips and falls. Not over his own feet. But over the corpse of Lord Teius. The mud beneath his hands twisting into stone tiles. The stone tiles of the Horuset Throne room. The air thick with the scorched scent of brimstone.

Smoke curling into the air from the smoldering hole in his father's chest. Eyes all around him in the shadows. The jedi's face towering over him morphing into the equally pale visage of Lord Kelsa's face, half exposed from his ruined helmet. The world around Krassus fading into shadow as he locks eyes with the cold, dead eyes of his father's corpse. Still twisted in his skull with the same glare. The same disdain. 

And then, impossible, the eyes stirred. Breath catching in Krassus' throat as the corpse of Lord Teius rose. Not just from the dead, but above him. To tower over Krassus as it might have done once when he was but a child in the Horuset Spire. Its face twisted, lips drawn back in a grimacing snarl as it reeled back an iron fist.

Krassus hadn't even the time to raise his arms to cover his face. 

The blow struck like a hammer.

KRassus falling hard with his back onto the gleaming, polished floors of the Horuset Spire's training hall. The Durasteel cold beneath him. The taste of blood in his mouth as his small hands scrape across the floor in search of the the wooden training blade he had dropped. Heat swelling in his swollen lips as a trickle of dark blood makes its way down his face from the gash in them.

"Again!" The Armsman's voice echoed around the ring. As Krassus got back to his feet as his opponent backed away and reformed their Shii-Cho stance. The rest of the Children watching from outside the ring. Seranaus scared, Xulia eager to seem interested, Kromus amused. All awaiting their turn.

Krassus' gaze falling onto his opponent. The tall lanky frame of his elder brother..  Krassus recognised him instantly even if the long years since his brother's death had twisted his face into a patchwork of forgotten features. Morphing, blurred by time, but unmistakably Valeus Horuset.

Valeus was several years Krassus' elder; soon to be sent off to the Academy if word around the spire was to be believed. But he had always preferred his books, scrolls and long studies over his bladework. And it had given him a matching bookish disposition. 

And so the armsman deemed it a not entirely unfair match. Pitting the more martial younger brother against the eldest more often than not. 
Krassus cherished it really, even if he could never hope to match the reach of Valeus' blade. It was after all one of the only times he actually got to spend time with his brother. 

And so Krassus nodded, sliding his dominant foot behind the other with practiced precision. Deliving into his fledgling mastery of the Dark Side. The world narrowing around him until his focus was on nothing else but Valeus and the spar. Pushing himself forwards with a rush. Stick crashing against stick as the two sparred.

High. Low. Parry. Riposte. Swing. Jab. A step back. A lunge forwards! High. Low. An opening! No? A feint!

A blow of Valeus' stick found his right hand. Bruising his knuckles as Krassus almost loses his grasp on his blade. A following low sweep. Krassus tried to avoid it. Tumbling backwards before the boy tripped over his own footing. Hitting the floor with a soft thud; Valeus' blade follows him down. Pausing mere inches from his face.

"Yield! I yield!" Krassus said. Letting his stick roll from his grasp as he raised his arms in surrender.

"KRASSUS!" Lord Teius' voice boomed like thunder through the hall. Everything stopped. Even the air froze in place as a shakey breath caught in Krassus' throat. A wave of cold Sweat rolling down his back as his eyes go wide. Heart pounding in his chest.

He had been so focused on his on the spar he hadn't even noticed that the armsman has slinked away and fallen to a knee. Hadn't noticed the arrival of his father. Lord Teius stormed in, the Sith Lord's presence flaring outwards like an incinerating burst of hellish fire and brimstone spewed out from the depths of the Horuset suns's hateful core. Rage incarnate as the armored behemoth clenched his hands into fists. Every step judgement manifest.

"WHAT IN THE EMPEROR'S NAME DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING, YOU USELESS VERMIN!" 

Krassus trembled on hands and knees. "I-I... M-my Lord, I-"

"He was beaten," Valeus offered. "I won." 

"No," Teius growled, cutting him off. Burning eyes locked on Krassus. "He yielded." The Lord corrected. The word was spat like poison. With one motion he yanked Seranaus up from his knees by the scruff of his neck. Left hand on the boy's neck, the other on his stick-blade.

A tug seeing them separated. The latter now finding it's way into the Lord's vice like grasp, as his other hand discarded the boy like trash. Throwing Seranaus hard to the ground in the wake of his passing as he stormed into the training pit.

Their Lord Father wrath incarnate as the Dark Side swelled with him. The first strike, like a blur, struck Valeus on the side of his head. Almost knocking his eyes out of their sockets as the wood crashed into his skull; sending the eldest son sprawling on the floor.

"And the fact that you accepted it makes you just as weak." The Lord declared as he knelt down over Valeus; an armored fist striking down into his chest. Driving the air from his lungs before Lord Teius unfurled his fingers; clawed digits digging into the fabric of Valeus' shirt as the Sith Lord lifted him bodily and hurled him from the ring like refuse. 

The Armsman stopping Valeus' flopping and rolling body with his right foot. 

"Take him." The Lord barked. The armsman obeyed. Bowing his bald head, keeping his gaze averted as he dragged Valeus from the hall. The rest of the children following them out like a scattering of ducks. 

Now it was only Teius and Krassus.

"Stand, Worm!"

Krassus didn't move fast enough. A clawed fist seized his crimson hair, dragging him upright as his scalp screamed in protest. 

A tug of the force saw the dropped training blade find Teius' palm. The Sith Lord pressing it hard against his son's chest.

"No son of mine will yield so meekly! No would-be Sith Warrior of the Horuset blood! You will fight until you no longer can. You do not stop until I say you are done. Opening stance, Shii-cho!" He demanded, letting the crying, trembling boy slide his right leg behind the other as he waited. 

Then it began. 

The Sith Lord burst forward, like a Tukata let of its leash. Blow after blow. Krassus' training blade batted aside in an instant. The wood in Lord Teius' grasp almost splintering under the force behind the strike. Then came another, and another swing. Blow after blow. To his back. His Arms. His ribs.
An armored fist cracked into his left eye socket, stars exploded in his vision. Blood ran down his cheek as Krassus was sent sprawling. 

The boy gasping for breath, barely conscious.

"GET. UP."

The Force snared around him like tendrils, yanking him into the air. Tears streemed freely now, mixing with blood as Krassus was thrown down onto his knees. The stick blade pressed  into him again. 

"OPENING STANCE, SHII-CHO!" 

Krassus obeyed.

Another beatdown.
Fists. Fury. Spite. 
Lord Teius swung the blade so hard that the wood cracked and splintered in his grasp, sending wood shavings sprawling across the ring. He had no further use for it. He throttled Krassus onto the ground and wailed down on his swollen, red face with his fists. Again, and again. Each blow sending the Sith Lord's own son crashing in and out of consciousness. 

The world spinning as the command came again.

"GET. UP."

He did. 

Barely standing. Face split open. A gargled wheeze blowing bubbled of dark blood between his lips as he just barely dragged his dominant foot behind the other. Teius was upon him not a moment later.

Strike after strike. 

A snap.
A wet, crushing crack.
His sword arm broken. As Lord Teius threw him to the ground and stomped down on his chest. Pinning him. Canting his head offset as he looked down at his son. Not a shred of love behind his eyes. Cold, calculating. Judging. Deeming Krassus, at last, unable to continue to fight.

"Only now are you defeated. I will not have you -yield- for less." He said. Turning. The lesson ended.

Krassus lay still. Blood in his mouth. His face almost split in half. breath shallow. Heart pounding. The Shadows rise around him, drowning out the world until there is nothing but his father. His back turning towards him. The shape of him. It arose nothing but rage. For once, Krassus wasn't afraid anymore. The Dark Side rose within his broken body as he moved. Once twice. Leveraging the momentum of his body to flip himself onto his side with a wet, bloody thud.

Then another swing saw him move onto his chest. Fingers trembling. One hand found the stick he had long since dropped. He took it. Pushed it into the ground with a blood gurgling groan of strain. He pushed. 

He fell. 

Face first in the blood pooling beneath him. 

He pushed again. And Again. On his knees. One knee. Then both feet.

He stood. Barely Resting his full weight onto the stick. 

Teius halted. Then turned. A deep, bone-grinding groan. Half roar, half laugh. The only approval Krassus would ever earn as he changed his course. Turning back to Krassus. Towering over the broken boy. Reeling back his iron fist.

A final blow. Clean, brutal. Two punches. One clean to his solar plexus; the other an upper cut to his nose.

Darkness claimed him.

Krassus awoke in his bed in the medbay of the Horuset estate. Reaching out with his left hand; he sees only the robotic steel of his cybernetic replacement. Himself once more. Chest heaving, cold sweat clinging to his skin as he sits up. Covered in kolto-patches on his shrapnel wounds. 
The taste of blood in his mouth, but no wound.
Only memory.

Ignoring the protests of the medical droid he pushes himself out of bed and finds the wash basin. Letting the water run; he splashes it into his face. Yet as he looks up into the mirror he sees only his father's scowl staring back at him, etched into his own face.

He grits his teeth; fire burning behind his crimson gaze as he reels back his fist. Slamming it into the mirror; the reflective surface shattering beneath the weight of the blow.]]> <![CDATA[The Pyre]]> https://www.horuset.com/showthread.php?tid=1423 Fri, 19 Sep 2025 13:02:02 +0000 Gaybam]]> https://www.horuset.com/showthread.php?tid=1423 Korriban. 

The wind was dead when she began.

Saarkha worked in silence, stacking thorned wood and heavy stone until her arms shook. Bark bit into her palms, splinters embedding beneath her nails. Ash and dirt smeared the sweat that crawled down her forearms. Each breath was a jagged blade of iron, blood and old smoke, threatening to cut her throat from within.

At the pyre’s base the beast waited, trussed with cord, eyes rolling white. It knew. They always knew.

She scored her own wrist first. The blade drew a slow crimson line, deliberate, until warmth slicked her hand and dripped into the dust. She pressed the knife to her lips, swallowed copper, and whispered the names of the Gods. Those whose presence she sought in the dark. Then she laid the edge against the animal’s throat.

The cut was ugly. A violent tearing more than a clean slice. Blood erupted hot against her face, soaking her collar. Her hair. She held the body steady as it spasmed, guiding the flow of deep crimson into the waiting bowl, then thrust her bleeding arm through muscle and sinew, stirring until their lives were indistinguishable. 

Until their tithes were indistinguishable. 

Fire licked the pyre as she split the carcass further, hands burrowing through wet warmth until entrails spilled like ropes across the timber. Smoke rose heavy, choking, and she bent her head over the gore, searching for a pattern.

Whispers slid between her ears — brittle, mocking.

Daughter of scars. Always on your knees. Always begging. Searching for a path in the dust. What will you trade this time?

Her lip curled. “Enough,” she said, voice raw. “I bleed. I burn. I keep your name alive while the rest forget. No more riddles.”

She thrust her cut wrist deeper into the wet, forearm parting muscle, mixing her blood with the beast’s until the surface beneath churned black-red.

“I am Saarkha of Mharn,” she hissed. “I will not crawl. You will speak plain, or I’ll scatter this offering to the sand and curse your silence.”

The air tightened, as if the sands themselves held their breath. The smoke thickened, shaping itself into shadowed figures, vast and watchful. The voices came again — not mocking now, but edged with iron. With warning. 

Then hear, scar-born. You are the hand that steadies the hammer. Guide your brother, or break him before the line is lost.

Heat clawed her face. The entrails shifted in her shadowed vision, blurred with sweat and soot and delirium, forming a chain around a sword, a woman’s shadow keeping it from snapping. She felt a terrible clarity settle in her bones. A weight. A terror. The price of daring to demand.

Her body trembled, but not from fear alone. From realisation. 

They had listened. They had answered.

She fed the remains to the flames, pushing them down until bone cracked and sparks burst skyward. Blisters rose on her palms; she didn’t release the pyre until her task was complete.

When only embers remained, she stood among them, slick with blood and smoke. The Gods — or her own madness — had answered, and now her path was laid bare.

She would be the shadow behind Qailan’s throne, the unseen spine in the House’s back. Should he falter, she would drive him straight — or into the fire.

Saarkha turned from the pyre, leaving the smell of burnt marrow behind. Whatever claimed her tonight had accepted her terms. 

But she knew.

It would demand more. ]]> Korriban. 

The wind was dead when she began.

Saarkha worked in silence, stacking thorned wood and heavy stone until her arms shook. Bark bit into her palms, splinters embedding beneath her nails. Ash and dirt smeared the sweat that crawled down her forearms. Each breath was a jagged blade of iron, blood and old smoke, threatening to cut her throat from within.

At the pyre’s base the beast waited, trussed with cord, eyes rolling white. It knew. They always knew.

She scored her own wrist first. The blade drew a slow crimson line, deliberate, until warmth slicked her hand and dripped into the dust. She pressed the knife to her lips, swallowed copper, and whispered the names of the Gods. Those whose presence she sought in the dark. Then she laid the edge against the animal’s throat.

The cut was ugly. A violent tearing more than a clean slice. Blood erupted hot against her face, soaking her collar. Her hair. She held the body steady as it spasmed, guiding the flow of deep crimson into the waiting bowl, then thrust her bleeding arm through muscle and sinew, stirring until their lives were indistinguishable. 

Until their tithes were indistinguishable. 

Fire licked the pyre as she split the carcass further, hands burrowing through wet warmth until entrails spilled like ropes across the timber. Smoke rose heavy, choking, and she bent her head over the gore, searching for a pattern.

Whispers slid between her ears — brittle, mocking.

Daughter of scars. Always on your knees. Always begging. Searching for a path in the dust. What will you trade this time?

Her lip curled. “Enough,” she said, voice raw. “I bleed. I burn. I keep your name alive while the rest forget. No more riddles.”

She thrust her cut wrist deeper into the wet, forearm parting muscle, mixing her blood with the beast’s until the surface beneath churned black-red.

“I am Saarkha of Mharn,” she hissed. “I will not crawl. You will speak plain, or I’ll scatter this offering to the sand and curse your silence.”

The air tightened, as if the sands themselves held their breath. The smoke thickened, shaping itself into shadowed figures, vast and watchful. The voices came again — not mocking now, but edged with iron. With warning. 

Then hear, scar-born. You are the hand that steadies the hammer. Guide your brother, or break him before the line is lost.

Heat clawed her face. The entrails shifted in her shadowed vision, blurred with sweat and soot and delirium, forming a chain around a sword, a woman’s shadow keeping it from snapping. She felt a terrible clarity settle in her bones. A weight. A terror. The price of daring to demand.

Her body trembled, but not from fear alone. From realisation. 

They had listened. They had answered.

She fed the remains to the flames, pushing them down until bone cracked and sparks burst skyward. Blisters rose on her palms; she didn’t release the pyre until her task was complete.

When only embers remained, she stood among them, slick with blood and smoke. The Gods — or her own madness — had answered, and now her path was laid bare.

She would be the shadow behind Qailan’s throne, the unseen spine in the House’s back. Should he falter, she would drive him straight — or into the fire.

Saarkha turned from the pyre, leaving the smell of burnt marrow behind. Whatever claimed her tonight had accepted her terms. 

But she knew.

It would demand more. ]]> <![CDATA[Solitary Grief]]> https://www.horuset.com/showthread.php?tid=1422 Fri, 19 Sep 2025 11:57:27 +0000 Joslae]]> https://www.horuset.com/showthread.php?tid=1422
She was alone, as she often was, watching the rain beat against the thick glass. Darkness, occasionally illuminated by the flash of lightning, and the glimmer of nearby towers. The flashes of blue light would illuminate the room she was in before fading again, highlighting the sole occupier in stark blue against the deep maroon shadows under the folds of skin, deep scars, and spurs. Though their eyes of red with dark sclera, they had little difficulty seeing in the low light; they had adjusted to it long ago. The room around her would at one point have been considered luxurious with well-made furniture, physical books, and paintings on the wall. But it was now covered under a thick layer of dust, only disturbed by a single line of foot steps from the door to a chair at a desk. Stale and cold air was more appropriate for a tomb.


Sitting with a tall crystal glass in one hand, it was filled nearly to the brim with a dark, viscous wine; its open bottle sat on the ground by her feet, but the wine itself had become too aerated, functionally ruined. Lips were dry and cracked, needing a drink, but the expensive alcohol did not whet her thirst. Heavy robes clung to her, looking almost like a statue of granite carved to guard a treasure, and thick hair lay loose on her head to resemble a messy hood. Had anyone been observing they might have assumed the solitary guardian was asleep, but the eyes were awake, staring into nothing, moist with pain and agitation.


An electronic device beeps once, then twice, and her only reaction is to close her eyes and sigh. Rousing herself from a trance-like state, she looks down at the untouched glass in her hand and frowns; wasted and pointless. Stretching in the uncomfortable chair, rolling her ankles as she prepares to stand. Lips part, and she wheezes, sounding like a corpse releasing its last breath, before speaking into the dark.


"Immortality is the state of remembrance ever after you are dead and buried; somebody must remember. Talk about you, consider you, fear you. There aren't many who still remember you. Even less remember the one who took you. I consider that a soft comfort, that the memory of your assassins has nearly faded. The coward is entirely gone, only remaining in my own head. The sorcerer still lingers, but less of him every day. Nobody will remember them, but you...." Words are caught, stumbled over, and swallowed. "I remember you still, until my last day. I remember the crimes that were ignored. Vengeance matters little to you now, you're gone, but I still want it. It's all I dream of, hurting those who allowed this hurt to come to me. You'd take some consolation of what has happened, our rivals are broken down, shadows of their former selves."


She lifts her glass, careful not to spill anything, in a mock toast in the aftermath of a victory. She blinks, but her eyes remain agitated, and dampness grows to barely holding back a torrent of tears. Though she doesn't appear sad, maybe sorrow had left this revenant long ago, or she was just too disconnected from her physical body. "I celebrate my continued victory, but doing it alone feels hollow." The glass is lowered again, and a short-lived celebration is finished. "At the top of the pyramid, without anyone to share it with."


Her other hand clenches tight, knuckles nearly white through highly pigmented skin, and nails dig deep into hard skin. Slowly opening the hand to loom down at an item she held: a ring of black lumpy metal, barely resembling a ring at all if not for the hole in the middle. Nobody could wear it anymore; it was far too misshapen. "You are immortal as long as I live. You'll never stop living in my head. That is my passion, the strength that will break my chains."


Outside the dust-laden room, a whole living world carried on just past the rain-covered glass, the ongoings of an Empire and its mighty capital. Hundreds of thousands nearby, millions outside the city, billions across the nearby systems. Uncountable across the areas where she had influence. Busy, always busy, never stopping to consider the small details. Never stopping to acknowledge the effects of war. But in the dust-laden room, she was alone.
]]>
She was alone, as she often was, watching the rain beat against the thick glass. Darkness, occasionally illuminated by the flash of lightning, and the glimmer of nearby towers. The flashes of blue light would illuminate the room she was in before fading again, highlighting the sole occupier in stark blue against the deep maroon shadows under the folds of skin, deep scars, and spurs. Though their eyes of red with dark sclera, they had little difficulty seeing in the low light; they had adjusted to it long ago. The room around her would at one point have been considered luxurious with well-made furniture, physical books, and paintings on the wall. But it was now covered under a thick layer of dust, only disturbed by a single line of foot steps from the door to a chair at a desk. Stale and cold air was more appropriate for a tomb.


Sitting with a tall crystal glass in one hand, it was filled nearly to the brim with a dark, viscous wine; its open bottle sat on the ground by her feet, but the wine itself had become too aerated, functionally ruined. Lips were dry and cracked, needing a drink, but the expensive alcohol did not whet her thirst. Heavy robes clung to her, looking almost like a statue of granite carved to guard a treasure, and thick hair lay loose on her head to resemble a messy hood. Had anyone been observing they might have assumed the solitary guardian was asleep, but the eyes were awake, staring into nothing, moist with pain and agitation.


An electronic device beeps once, then twice, and her only reaction is to close her eyes and sigh. Rousing herself from a trance-like state, she looks down at the untouched glass in her hand and frowns; wasted and pointless. Stretching in the uncomfortable chair, rolling her ankles as she prepares to stand. Lips part, and she wheezes, sounding like a corpse releasing its last breath, before speaking into the dark.


"Immortality is the state of remembrance ever after you are dead and buried; somebody must remember. Talk about you, consider you, fear you. There aren't many who still remember you. Even less remember the one who took you. I consider that a soft comfort, that the memory of your assassins has nearly faded. The coward is entirely gone, only remaining in my own head. The sorcerer still lingers, but less of him every day. Nobody will remember them, but you...." Words are caught, stumbled over, and swallowed. "I remember you still, until my last day. I remember the crimes that were ignored. Vengeance matters little to you now, you're gone, but I still want it. It's all I dream of, hurting those who allowed this hurt to come to me. You'd take some consolation of what has happened, our rivals are broken down, shadows of their former selves."


She lifts her glass, careful not to spill anything, in a mock toast in the aftermath of a victory. She blinks, but her eyes remain agitated, and dampness grows to barely holding back a torrent of tears. Though she doesn't appear sad, maybe sorrow had left this revenant long ago, or she was just too disconnected from her physical body. "I celebrate my continued victory, but doing it alone feels hollow." The glass is lowered again, and a short-lived celebration is finished. "At the top of the pyramid, without anyone to share it with."


Her other hand clenches tight, knuckles nearly white through highly pigmented skin, and nails dig deep into hard skin. Slowly opening the hand to loom down at an item she held: a ring of black lumpy metal, barely resembling a ring at all if not for the hole in the middle. Nobody could wear it anymore; it was far too misshapen. "You are immortal as long as I live. You'll never stop living in my head. That is my passion, the strength that will break my chains."


Outside the dust-laden room, a whole living world carried on just past the rain-covered glass, the ongoings of an Empire and its mighty capital. Hundreds of thousands nearby, millions outside the city, billions across the nearby systems. Uncountable across the areas where she had influence. Busy, always busy, never stopping to consider the small details. Never stopping to acknowledge the effects of war. But in the dust-laden room, she was alone.
]]> <![CDATA[[IC] Private Journal]]> https://www.horuset.com/showthread.php?tid=1421 Thu, 18 Sep 2025 22:52:31 +0000 Sith Stûza]]> https://www.horuset.com/showthread.php?tid=1421 The following is a recording of Sith Stuza's personal journal. The writing is short and cryptic, much like the nature of the person behind it. 

Unavailable for the public unless shared by the Sith alone.


"I've outlasted them."

His hand trembled against his side.

"Is this how the Dark Lords of the past felt, outlasting their rivals?"

No.

"I once thought it cunning to reach this far without expression, without damage... Preparation. For what?"

"I am dying."

He knew this. He knew what was due.

"By the end, it won't be a title they will remember."

"I've thought of my role in the Sith Order. Order. Structure. Preparation. To create something that will outlast."

His augmented lungs rattled, exhaled to the thought of a future. Without him.

"Tradition, for one not born into it, must be seized through conquest."

"I outlasted my rivals, I did not conquer them."

"I will train to remove all thoughts of titles. Only to witness power, I cannot allow defeat before ever beginning."

His hand steadied at the thought of merely having to face a Sith. For that, he was more than prepared.

Eager.]]> The following is a recording of Sith Stuza's personal journal. The writing is short and cryptic, much like the nature of the person behind it. 

Unavailable for the public unless shared by the Sith alone.


"I've outlasted them."

His hand trembled against his side.

"Is this how the Dark Lords of the past felt, outlasting their rivals?"

No.

"I once thought it cunning to reach this far without expression, without damage... Preparation. For what?"

"I am dying."

He knew this. He knew what was due.

"By the end, it won't be a title they will remember."

"I've thought of my role in the Sith Order. Order. Structure. Preparation. To create something that will outlast."

His augmented lungs rattled, exhaled to the thought of a future. Without him.

"Tradition, for one not born into it, must be seized through conquest."

"I outlasted my rivals, I did not conquer them."

"I will train to remove all thoughts of titles. Only to witness power, I cannot allow defeat before ever beginning."

His hand steadied at the thought of merely having to face a Sith. For that, he was more than prepared.

Eager.]]> <![CDATA[Freedom or Death]]> https://www.horuset.com/showthread.php?tid=1419 Mon, 15 Sep 2025 17:38:22 +0000 Krassus Horuset]]> https://www.horuset.com/showthread.php?tid=1419 CHAPTER I: Tarhan I


The Gruuvan Shaal parlor had a name once, an overlong thing in Old Nam’tees that promised spice and smoke, and the best cut of meat this side of Nam’ta Prime’s equator. The script still curled in pink neon over the window, but a third of the letters had gone dim, and two of the rest flickered like exhausted eyes.

Empty tables waited in fours, chrome legs and white laminate wiped near to the bone. The vibro-fan above the door turned on a dry bearing, creaking like a ship’s mast on windless seas. One slow groan every revolution.

A holobox in the corner dribbled out music meant for livelier hours, an auto-mix of synth pipes and drum loops, always almost about to be something anyone cared to hear, then wandering away again into generic slop. Perfect for restaurant ambience.


Derrek had the grill open and his shoulders rounded, the Besalisk’s four thick hands working with patient fury; polish, buff, turn, polish again. He said it got streaks if the paste set, and that had sounded like a reason the first time. By the fifth, even Derrek looked a little ashamed of the zeal in his elbows, sighing as he polished the hours away behind his unlit grill.

Tarhan sat on the high stool behind the register and slouched until his horns bumped the back wall. The young Zabrak had the holonet open on his pad, his tattooed face lit in shifting colors; Imperial teal, then the sunny saffron of adverts, then the lipstick red of a content warning he swiped away without reading. He wore the restaurant apron still, a once-white thing spattered in sauces and water rings, tied twice around a waist that had nothing spare on it. On a normal day his shift passed in bursts: orders, bites to wrap, oil spitting at his wrists, Derrek swearing like a freighter captain barking commands out to his deckhands.

But now there were no orders. A Twi’lek couple had come in at noon and bought tea, sitting in a corner without speaking, leaving half the cups as they went. After that? Nobody. The door rang only for the wind.

“Song change,” Derrek muttered from the kitchen without looking up.

“Uh-huh,” Tarhan replied, poking at the holo tile next to the register. The synth pipes playing from the holobox gave way to something with more drum, then to something more smooth. He returned to his scrolling.

With a touch the hutt-ball game playing on his pad made way for the sound of smooth, official brass that suggested medals and clean boots. Governor Ralter appearing in frame, a hard woman rendered soft by the algorithm that smoothed every face on this channel. Old footage, Tarhan thought. The Governor’s hair different; smoother. The frown and dark circles under her eyes not yet a part of the face displayed. “Nam’ta is safe,” she said. “Nam’ta is united.” Behind her ran a loop of parades, flags folded like bread, gift baskets for nameless veterans. “But only because of those who fight for her. The few, the brave, the—”

Tarhan’s thumb slid before she finished.

The brass chased him into the next tile and then cut at once to a youth with shoulders like a closet, all square angles and new Imperial armor. “Join the Imperial Sector Defence Forces,” the lettering demanded, not a question.
Do something. Be someone. Learn a trade. Serve your sector. Serve your Empire.
The boy clicked open a thermal detonator with the ease of a lighter and smiled at the camera as if expecting a kiss for his patriotism.


Tarhan scrolled, nose wrinkling. He found a holo of a man he’d seen three times before, an Arcona who gave cooking lessons with a blaster rifle slung across his back, making soup with the bored calm of a soldier on leave.

There were a series of funny edits made from his dry expression and alien accent. He snorted at one and watched it twice. Another scroll, then an advert for a sportsbook he could not legally use.

Then a music teaser, a local label’s banner; the grain in the picture said the artist was more talented than paid. The beat in his ears shifted into real rhythm for the first time that day. He disconnected his earbuds and connected it to the shop’s holobox. A trembling string counterpointed by a warm kick. The singer came in low and careful, like a secret shared behind closed doors. Derrek’s polishing slowed as he listened.
“Who’s that?”

“Sylvi Lumi,” Tarhan said. “Just a teaser.”

“Tell her to come in and eat eh?” Derrek said. “I’ll give her a discount if she posts about the shop. Is she pretty?”

“She’s a Bothan,” Tarhan said, waiting for Derrek’s reaction.

“Ah… Never mind then.” A smirk, then he scrolled on, earbuds connected once more.

Holo after holo, and then, there. A thumbnail that was just sky, the slanted line of a roof, and the corner of a torn banner flapping in burnt air.
The caption spelled F.N.A. with an emoji knife. One of Barracas’ rebel groups, Tarhan knew.
 His thumb hovered the way a hand hovers over a burn. The thing about these, other than that they were highly illegal to watch; posted by burner accounts on Nam’ta’s holonet, was that they were usually just noise.

A burst of static, rebel armor-cam footage. The ground too close. Some shouting, blaster fire, then the end. He knew better than to expect anything but the bitter taste of war footage in his mouth afterwards. He tapped anyway.


The shot began wide: Nam’ta Secundus, if the ruined industrial sector was anything to go by. Bulkheads of old factories risen around the recorder like teeth; the broken windows were teeth too. The area bombed out; the light brown and gray that came after fire. Somebody on the rooftop coughed; a thoughtless human cough. He swung the camera and caught them all in frame.

Imperial siege tanks; six in a straight line, each the size of a small townhouse, all flat plates and humped turrets. The column damaging the street by rolling down it. Soldiers flowed on either side of the snaking column as it crept through the ruined road. Armor clean at the shoulders where they were emblazoned with the Imperial banner and stained elsewhere.

The charcoal insignia of the Conquest Consolidation Corps gleaming in the plating of chestplates and tank hulls. They moved like the music playing in the background said they would, with precision. Trained and battle-hardened. Moving in formations, rifles at the same angle. Scanning alleys and windows. But seemingly missing the man with the camera.

In the background of the video a voice began to sing in a rasp friendly enough to seem harmless: “Go on home, Imperial soldiers, go on home…”

Tarhan almost smiled. Music was such a simple thing, but somehow everyone always found a song to do the bloody work.

“Have you got no kriffin’ homes of your own?” The voice continued, a drum behind it. The camera tightened a little; cropped as if the edge of the column was the edge of the very world.

“As long as you’re here, we’ll fight you without fear—”

An Imperial soldier looked up, idly, like a man noticing weather. The tune made Tarhan’s throat itch, and he swallowed and didn’t take his eyes off the feed.

“—Until Nam’ta is free once more….” The voice laughed and then took the melody someplace twisty and proud. “And if you stay, Imperial soldiers, if you stay?”


A blast.

The world whitened; the street awash with dust, fire, and a wash of petal color. And then there were no men any longer; a pink mist and hard pieces of what had been soldiers blew away in the shockwave.

 And the lead tank, gods. The tank lifted entire; all that weight and steel jumping up a solid three meters into the air, tearing open as it jumped; wrangled inside out violently by the force of the explosion as if a giant had pinched it and tossed it back in disgust.

The camera jumped. The rooftop cougher made a noise that might have been a prayer or a slur. A wash of dust overtaking the camera’s point of view.

The singer didn’t miss a beat as the image faded.

“You’ll never, ever beat the F.N.A!” The frame froze.

The Free Nam’ta coat of arms reared up. A green republic sigil with a wreath like forest around it, and the words overlaid in a heroic font that didn’t care you had just watched a platoon of men as precisely machined as their rifles turn to mist.

“FREEDOM OR DEATH!”


Tarhan realized he had not breathed properly since the tune began.

He let the breath go with a little hiss he was not proud of. He made himself roll the video back with his thumb, and then, because he already felt filthy, watched it again.

He saw details he had missed: the way the first two soldiers closest to the tank vanished entirely while the third had a spine to drop, the metal links on the treads coming off in stringers, the way the tank’s turret turned almost lazily as it went up, empty, showing the camera the open mouth of its barrel and nothing behind it before it flung out of frame.

The pink clung in the air afterwards like the vapor of sunsets on summer days. He hated the shiver it sent down his spine.

He watched to the sigil again and then closed the feed, putting the datapad outside as he took out his earbuds with shaky hands. A deep breath.

The shop was as before. Derrek was wiping the same oval with the same cloth. The fan above squawked once and creaked and soldiered on. Tarhan stared at his hands. He stood up, and his stool scraped the floor with a shriek that made Derrek flinch.
“Boss,” Tarhan said.

Derrek glanced his way, then to the grill, then back again. “Mmh?”

“Can I go? Early. There’s… I did the tables.”

Derrek held the cloth in the air like a captured flag. “You polished them. But did you do the legs? People’s feet, they leave—”

“Also the legs, yes.” Tarhan kept his voice careful. “Twice.” He had not done them twice, but had done them once well, and that was near enough to twice in any book that mattered.

“The register?”

“Counted. The same it was, almost.”

“You scrubbed the—”

“Floors?” Tarhan said, a little too fast. “Yes. Twice. Even did the edge under the counter where it gets sticky.”

Derrek sighed, long as a slow train, and let his shoulders sag under the weight of all his hands. He looked toward the door as if expecting salvation to come marching through. Nothing walked past but the wind and a piece of trash that had lived better days as a sandwich paper. “Go,” he said at last. “Go then, boy. I’ll close in a little bit… I think I’ll sit with the grill and polish him a sixth time.” He swallowed, lips pressed together. “Your paycheck—”

“I know,” Tarhan said. “It’s fine, I understand.”

“It’s not fine.” Derrek stared at the grill so he didn’t have to stare at Tarhan. “I won’t cheat you. You’re a good kid. Just… not today. Bring your father in one night, eh? I’ll feed him. It’ll be good to have the old chief around again, ey?” He smiled, or tried to, running two of his hands over his scalp. “You should eat something too, Tarhan, or the wind’ll carry you off.”

Tarhan nodded. “I’ll get something on the way home,” he said, and untied his apron, folding it into a narrow bundle.

He could imagine Derrek wearing grief like a bandolier. He put the apron under the counter and took his pad and slung his jacket over one shoulder. “Thanks,” he said. He meant: thank you for telling me you won’t cheat me. Thank you for talking about my father without asking if he had gone yellow and soft like the rumors said aliens do when you take their jobs.

The bell over the door chimed for the second time that day, marking his leaving like a sick private joke.

Outside, the day had bled into the hour when the city found its neon. Nam’ta Prime’s poorer blocks wore light like makeup, lines of color laying along the rain sluices and tracing out the cracks in stone. Tarhan tucked his pad into his jacket and set his feet for home. He kept to the side streets where the vendors knew him and the light smelled like the spices they burned to cover the smell of oil. Flats opened above in little balconies where women watered sour plants and the runoff splashed the passersby.
A Rodian cut a Bothan’s hair with clippers in a doorway.

As he turned the corner he passed a mural he had not seen the day before.

Fresh paint showed in the wet gloss. Ralter had the body of a horse in it, ridiculous long teeth and eyes pointing different ways like compass needles gone drunk. The artist had given her a bit, a saddle, and reins. And then, having already gone far enough, went further, setting her skittering beneath a thin rider whose nose and tight moustache wanted to be the whole portrait.

Kaldon, he imagined. His cloak was white and too big, a child wearing his father’s robe. A little brass plaque on his chest, oversized so one could read the figure was a Commodore.

Ralter had a silver platter in her forehooves, and on it the Nam’ta system, done like a child’s model with orbit rings and moons etched around the red bead of the Nam’ta gas giant.

She offered it up to a giant, green-and-gangrene troll in a white uniform, stained the color of old rust in places where blood does not reach. The face was a joke, a monstrous frog with sagging eyes and a cruel smirk lined with pointed teeth, nearly drowning in the fat rolls of his gibs. Moff Graush rendered in the shape artists reserved for monsters that had eaten villages in children’s stories.

The fatness did the work of two paragraphs of invective. Tarhan stopped in the neon-lit puddle at his boots and looked up at the thing until he felt absurd and still looked a heartbeat longer. Then he shook his head, half a grin on his mouth he didn’t feel. The artist had been brave and obvious. And from what he saw on the holos, the portrait of Graush was strikingly accurate. He wondered how long the thing would last before a brush of gray erased it back to wall.

He went on.

The alleys wound tighter in the old blocks and collected smells like coins: frying batter, the iron of cheap blood, damp clothes that never dried in the shade. As he walked he realized he was humming, and then realized what he was humming. “Go on home, Imperial soldiers…” He sang under his breath, the way a man talks to himself about bread and does not know he is hungry until he hears it.

“Go on home…” he mumbled. “…You’ll never ever beat the—”

“What was that, boy?!”


The voice came from a kink in the alley where the neon died and the wet concrete shined black as a boot. Tarhan stopped dead in his tracks.

The man who stepped out of the shadow wore the uniform of the Nam’ta Security Forces, the new version with the Imperial banner stitched where the Confederate sigil had been, like a rag to stop a hole. He was a big man with heavy wrists and a belly that said he ate at his leisure. His hair retreated from a forehead creased with the thinking he clearly seldom did. He had a stunstick at his hip and a blaster pistol he wore low like a promise.

The man stepped forward and set a palm on Tarhan’s chest, pushing the young Zabrak, not hard, but hard enough to make his back touch the wall. Tarhan took a breath and swallowed the song whole.

“Nothing!” he said, knowing the punishment for aliens associating with the rebellion. “Nothing! I wasn’t! I was—" 
The man’s eyes narrowed as he parted his lips to speak before they widened with something between recognition and pity. “You’re one of Zerrin’s boys, ain’t ya?” he said, letting go as he stepped back as if someone had called his name. “Zerrin Vahs. Used to be captain of the local riot forces…”

Tarhan rubbed at his jacket where the push had landed, and nodded. “My father, aye.” he said.

“How is he?” The man’s voice went solemn, the way men talk about ill kin. “I heard… well, I heard what they did to him. ‘Deemed surplus.’”

Tarhan nodded. “He’s looking,” he said. “For a new job.”

“Hmm.” The man’s mouth made a shape that wanted to be pity and settled for tired. “They told us about reorganization. Efficiency. Imperial standards. You say the words enough it sounds like a prayer. New flag, new stripes, same old blisters. Zebb.” He tapped his chest with two fingers. “Sergeant Zebb.”

“Tarhan,” Tarhan said, as if the sergeant did not know. He tried to make his shoulders settle away from the wall.

Zebb nodded at the alley mouth where the neon cast pale shapes on the wet floor. “Tell your old man I said hello… and mind where you sing, Tarhan Vahs,” he said. “I know where that tune is from, boy, and the Imperials—” He lifted a hand and let it fall. “They don’t have an ear for humor. And they have a taste for handing out hard labor off-world. Twenty years for a song if they say it’s sedition. Thirty for a flag the wrong way up. Thirty-five for spitting if the spit lands where it shouldn’t.”

He looked at Tarhan as if to put a blessing on the boy and found his hand empty instead. “Tell your father… tell him I wish him luck. And tell him I had no say, none of us did… It’s the Empire did all that nasty business.”

“Aye? And yet you still wear their uniform,” Tarhan said before he could stop himself, and flicked a glance at the new banner stitched on Zebb’s sleeve.

Zebb looked at it too, as if surprised to find it there. “Aye,” he said. “Somebody’s got to hold the door while the wolves pass… I still serve Nam’ta, and when these rebels are gone the Imps will leave us to ourselves again too…” He said, his eyes glazing over as if that is what he told himself to sleep at night. He shifted on his feet. “Go on home, boy. And be careful with your songs.” He hesitated. “Maybe stick to the old ones. The ones we sang before the cords on our throats grew  so tight.”


Tarhan slid out of the alley’s pinch and back into the street, and Zebb did not follow. He thought of telling his father about the encounter and then thought of the way his father’s mouth did not make much of smiles since dismissal, and kept the thought in his pocket instead.

The housing blocks rose with the dull authority of bad news, their faces pocked from decades of edits and undoings, laundry lines pulled like tripwires across inner courtyards. Since the dismissal they had moved into the three-room that barely took the couch they had and a table a cousin had given them begrudgingly. His little brother’s school was three stops farther, his mother said she liked the walk, and Tarhan pretended to believe her.

From two streets away he saw the smoke. Not the cooking smoke or the cold-weather ghost of bad heaters, but the clean, strong scent of something meant to frighten. He smelled the ash before he reached the corner. Then he heard the orders and saw them. Real soldiers; Imperial, the color of storms. They made triangles at the entrances with their bodies, lines tight and rifles held in the bored alert of men who expect to shoot, and might just do so if it would end the tedious task ahead.

They had surrounded the neighborhood, armored speeders and prison shuttles nearby. A corridor to block off any escape as the rest of their unit went to work.

The people who lived there, most of them aliens, were being hustled down the stairs by squads and stripped of belts and shoelaces as if they might hang themselves on the way to the shuttles. Taken out of their homes; told to leave to the shuttles. Once arriving outside, hands were bound in bright flex that cut skin like wire.

Tarhan could see blinds were torn from windows and the rooms behind laid out like organs, everything intimate and wrong under the open look of soldiers who didn’t see. Suitcases packed by those with more time to prepare as the Imperials made their way through the housing blocks were opened on the staircases and balconies, the contents poured into communal piles on the concrete, then kicked apart with the toes of boots. “No baggage!” one of the Imperials barked, flatly, as if the word had been a rebellion that needed to be stamped out.

The voice was echoed by another, then another. “No baggage!” A little girl cried because a soldier had taken her doll and thrown it into the pile that used to be breakfast bowls and shirts.

Somebody’s holo-radio played a dance song and then stuttered into static. A man tried to pick up a photograph that had slid and received a baton across the wrist that left a purple welt in the shape of a country he did not know. There was blaster fire somewhere inside, short and efficient, and then another burst like punctuation.

Tarhan stopped as if his bones had been pulled out and the meat left to learn balance. The world narrowed until it had room for only two faces: his mother’s, the set of her mouth when she bent over Eolat’s shoes, and Eolat’s, sticky with breakfast, his horns little budding curls as soft as any child’s hair. They were inside. Of course they were inside. They would have been at home waiting for him to finish and say how quiet it had been and they would have pretended it was enough.

As he watched the smoke rise from the housing block echoing with blaster fire and the cold shouts of Imperial diction he knew. Knew as well as the singer on the rooftop had known the next line of his song. That his mother was in that smoke and his brother besides her.

“Mom! Eolat!” he shouted, and the sound of his brother’s name in his own mouth gave him courage or made him twice the fool. He did not care which.

He ran forward…]]> CHAPTER I: Tarhan I


The Gruuvan Shaal parlor had a name once, an overlong thing in Old Nam’tees that promised spice and smoke, and the best cut of meat this side of Nam’ta Prime’s equator. The script still curled in pink neon over the window, but a third of the letters had gone dim, and two of the rest flickered like exhausted eyes.

Empty tables waited in fours, chrome legs and white laminate wiped near to the bone. The vibro-fan above the door turned on a dry bearing, creaking like a ship’s mast on windless seas. One slow groan every revolution.

A holobox in the corner dribbled out music meant for livelier hours, an auto-mix of synth pipes and drum loops, always almost about to be something anyone cared to hear, then wandering away again into generic slop. Perfect for restaurant ambience.


Derrek had the grill open and his shoulders rounded, the Besalisk’s four thick hands working with patient fury; polish, buff, turn, polish again. He said it got streaks if the paste set, and that had sounded like a reason the first time. By the fifth, even Derrek looked a little ashamed of the zeal in his elbows, sighing as he polished the hours away behind his unlit grill.

Tarhan sat on the high stool behind the register and slouched until his horns bumped the back wall. The young Zabrak had the holonet open on his pad, his tattooed face lit in shifting colors; Imperial teal, then the sunny saffron of adverts, then the lipstick red of a content warning he swiped away without reading. He wore the restaurant apron still, a once-white thing spattered in sauces and water rings, tied twice around a waist that had nothing spare on it. On a normal day his shift passed in bursts: orders, bites to wrap, oil spitting at his wrists, Derrek swearing like a freighter captain barking commands out to his deckhands.

But now there were no orders. A Twi’lek couple had come in at noon and bought tea, sitting in a corner without speaking, leaving half the cups as they went. After that? Nobody. The door rang only for the wind.

“Song change,” Derrek muttered from the kitchen without looking up.

“Uh-huh,” Tarhan replied, poking at the holo tile next to the register. The synth pipes playing from the holobox gave way to something with more drum, then to something more smooth. He returned to his scrolling.

With a touch the hutt-ball game playing on his pad made way for the sound of smooth, official brass that suggested medals and clean boots. Governor Ralter appearing in frame, a hard woman rendered soft by the algorithm that smoothed every face on this channel. Old footage, Tarhan thought. The Governor’s hair different; smoother. The frown and dark circles under her eyes not yet a part of the face displayed. “Nam’ta is safe,” she said. “Nam’ta is united.” Behind her ran a loop of parades, flags folded like bread, gift baskets for nameless veterans. “But only because of those who fight for her. The few, the brave, the—”

Tarhan’s thumb slid before she finished.

The brass chased him into the next tile and then cut at once to a youth with shoulders like a closet, all square angles and new Imperial armor. “Join the Imperial Sector Defence Forces,” the lettering demanded, not a question.
Do something. Be someone. Learn a trade. Serve your sector. Serve your Empire.
The boy clicked open a thermal detonator with the ease of a lighter and smiled at the camera as if expecting a kiss for his patriotism.


Tarhan scrolled, nose wrinkling. He found a holo of a man he’d seen three times before, an Arcona who gave cooking lessons with a blaster rifle slung across his back, making soup with the bored calm of a soldier on leave.

There were a series of funny edits made from his dry expression and alien accent. He snorted at one and watched it twice. Another scroll, then an advert for a sportsbook he could not legally use.

Then a music teaser, a local label’s banner; the grain in the picture said the artist was more talented than paid. The beat in his ears shifted into real rhythm for the first time that day. He disconnected his earbuds and connected it to the shop’s holobox. A trembling string counterpointed by a warm kick. The singer came in low and careful, like a secret shared behind closed doors. Derrek’s polishing slowed as he listened.
“Who’s that?”

“Sylvi Lumi,” Tarhan said. “Just a teaser.”

“Tell her to come in and eat eh?” Derrek said. “I’ll give her a discount if she posts about the shop. Is she pretty?”

“She’s a Bothan,” Tarhan said, waiting for Derrek’s reaction.

“Ah… Never mind then.” A smirk, then he scrolled on, earbuds connected once more.

Holo after holo, and then, there. A thumbnail that was just sky, the slanted line of a roof, and the corner of a torn banner flapping in burnt air.
The caption spelled F.N.A. with an emoji knife. One of Barracas’ rebel groups, Tarhan knew.
 His thumb hovered the way a hand hovers over a burn. The thing about these, other than that they were highly illegal to watch; posted by burner accounts on Nam’ta’s holonet, was that they were usually just noise.

A burst of static, rebel armor-cam footage. The ground too close. Some shouting, blaster fire, then the end. He knew better than to expect anything but the bitter taste of war footage in his mouth afterwards. He tapped anyway.


The shot began wide: Nam’ta Secundus, if the ruined industrial sector was anything to go by. Bulkheads of old factories risen around the recorder like teeth; the broken windows were teeth too. The area bombed out; the light brown and gray that came after fire. Somebody on the rooftop coughed; a thoughtless human cough. He swung the camera and caught them all in frame.

Imperial siege tanks; six in a straight line, each the size of a small townhouse, all flat plates and humped turrets. The column damaging the street by rolling down it. Soldiers flowed on either side of the snaking column as it crept through the ruined road. Armor clean at the shoulders where they were emblazoned with the Imperial banner and stained elsewhere.

The charcoal insignia of the Conquest Consolidation Corps gleaming in the plating of chestplates and tank hulls. They moved like the music playing in the background said they would, with precision. Trained and battle-hardened. Moving in formations, rifles at the same angle. Scanning alleys and windows. But seemingly missing the man with the camera.

In the background of the video a voice began to sing in a rasp friendly enough to seem harmless: “Go on home, Imperial soldiers, go on home…”

Tarhan almost smiled. Music was such a simple thing, but somehow everyone always found a song to do the bloody work.

“Have you got no kriffin’ homes of your own?” The voice continued, a drum behind it. The camera tightened a little; cropped as if the edge of the column was the edge of the very world.

“As long as you’re here, we’ll fight you without fear—”

An Imperial soldier looked up, idly, like a man noticing weather. The tune made Tarhan’s throat itch, and he swallowed and didn’t take his eyes off the feed.

“—Until Nam’ta is free once more….” The voice laughed and then took the melody someplace twisty and proud. “And if you stay, Imperial soldiers, if you stay?”


A blast.

The world whitened; the street awash with dust, fire, and a wash of petal color. And then there were no men any longer; a pink mist and hard pieces of what had been soldiers blew away in the shockwave.

 And the lead tank, gods. The tank lifted entire; all that weight and steel jumping up a solid three meters into the air, tearing open as it jumped; wrangled inside out violently by the force of the explosion as if a giant had pinched it and tossed it back in disgust.

The camera jumped. The rooftop cougher made a noise that might have been a prayer or a slur. A wash of dust overtaking the camera’s point of view.

The singer didn’t miss a beat as the image faded.

“You’ll never, ever beat the F.N.A!” The frame froze.

The Free Nam’ta coat of arms reared up. A green republic sigil with a wreath like forest around it, and the words overlaid in a heroic font that didn’t care you had just watched a platoon of men as precisely machined as their rifles turn to mist.

“FREEDOM OR DEATH!”


Tarhan realized he had not breathed properly since the tune began.

He let the breath go with a little hiss he was not proud of. He made himself roll the video back with his thumb, and then, because he already felt filthy, watched it again.

He saw details he had missed: the way the first two soldiers closest to the tank vanished entirely while the third had a spine to drop, the metal links on the treads coming off in stringers, the way the tank’s turret turned almost lazily as it went up, empty, showing the camera the open mouth of its barrel and nothing behind it before it flung out of frame.

The pink clung in the air afterwards like the vapor of sunsets on summer days. He hated the shiver it sent down his spine.

He watched to the sigil again and then closed the feed, putting the datapad outside as he took out his earbuds with shaky hands. A deep breath.

The shop was as before. Derrek was wiping the same oval with the same cloth. The fan above squawked once and creaked and soldiered on. Tarhan stared at his hands. He stood up, and his stool scraped the floor with a shriek that made Derrek flinch.
“Boss,” Tarhan said.

Derrek glanced his way, then to the grill, then back again. “Mmh?”

“Can I go? Early. There’s… I did the tables.”

Derrek held the cloth in the air like a captured flag. “You polished them. But did you do the legs? People’s feet, they leave—”

“Also the legs, yes.” Tarhan kept his voice careful. “Twice.” He had not done them twice, but had done them once well, and that was near enough to twice in any book that mattered.

“The register?”

“Counted. The same it was, almost.”

“You scrubbed the—”

“Floors?” Tarhan said, a little too fast. “Yes. Twice. Even did the edge under the counter where it gets sticky.”

Derrek sighed, long as a slow train, and let his shoulders sag under the weight of all his hands. He looked toward the door as if expecting salvation to come marching through. Nothing walked past but the wind and a piece of trash that had lived better days as a sandwich paper. “Go,” he said at last. “Go then, boy. I’ll close in a little bit… I think I’ll sit with the grill and polish him a sixth time.” He swallowed, lips pressed together. “Your paycheck—”

“I know,” Tarhan said. “It’s fine, I understand.”

“It’s not fine.” Derrek stared at the grill so he didn’t have to stare at Tarhan. “I won’t cheat you. You’re a good kid. Just… not today. Bring your father in one night, eh? I’ll feed him. It’ll be good to have the old chief around again, ey?” He smiled, or tried to, running two of his hands over his scalp. “You should eat something too, Tarhan, or the wind’ll carry you off.”

Tarhan nodded. “I’ll get something on the way home,” he said, and untied his apron, folding it into a narrow bundle.

He could imagine Derrek wearing grief like a bandolier. He put the apron under the counter and took his pad and slung his jacket over one shoulder. “Thanks,” he said. He meant: thank you for telling me you won’t cheat me. Thank you for talking about my father without asking if he had gone yellow and soft like the rumors said aliens do when you take their jobs.

The bell over the door chimed for the second time that day, marking his leaving like a sick private joke.

Outside, the day had bled into the hour when the city found its neon. Nam’ta Prime’s poorer blocks wore light like makeup, lines of color laying along the rain sluices and tracing out the cracks in stone. Tarhan tucked his pad into his jacket and set his feet for home. He kept to the side streets where the vendors knew him and the light smelled like the spices they burned to cover the smell of oil. Flats opened above in little balconies where women watered sour plants and the runoff splashed the passersby.
A Rodian cut a Bothan’s hair with clippers in a doorway.

As he turned the corner he passed a mural he had not seen the day before.

Fresh paint showed in the wet gloss. Ralter had the body of a horse in it, ridiculous long teeth and eyes pointing different ways like compass needles gone drunk. The artist had given her a bit, a saddle, and reins. And then, having already gone far enough, went further, setting her skittering beneath a thin rider whose nose and tight moustache wanted to be the whole portrait.

Kaldon, he imagined. His cloak was white and too big, a child wearing his father’s robe. A little brass plaque on his chest, oversized so one could read the figure was a Commodore.

Ralter had a silver platter in her forehooves, and on it the Nam’ta system, done like a child’s model with orbit rings and moons etched around the red bead of the Nam’ta gas giant.

She offered it up to a giant, green-and-gangrene troll in a white uniform, stained the color of old rust in places where blood does not reach. The face was a joke, a monstrous frog with sagging eyes and a cruel smirk lined with pointed teeth, nearly drowning in the fat rolls of his gibs. Moff Graush rendered in the shape artists reserved for monsters that had eaten villages in children’s stories.

The fatness did the work of two paragraphs of invective. Tarhan stopped in the neon-lit puddle at his boots and looked up at the thing until he felt absurd and still looked a heartbeat longer. Then he shook his head, half a grin on his mouth he didn’t feel. The artist had been brave and obvious. And from what he saw on the holos, the portrait of Graush was strikingly accurate. He wondered how long the thing would last before a brush of gray erased it back to wall.

He went on.

The alleys wound tighter in the old blocks and collected smells like coins: frying batter, the iron of cheap blood, damp clothes that never dried in the shade. As he walked he realized he was humming, and then realized what he was humming. “Go on home, Imperial soldiers…” He sang under his breath, the way a man talks to himself about bread and does not know he is hungry until he hears it.

“Go on home…” he mumbled. “…You’ll never ever beat the—”

“What was that, boy?!”


The voice came from a kink in the alley where the neon died and the wet concrete shined black as a boot. Tarhan stopped dead in his tracks.

The man who stepped out of the shadow wore the uniform of the Nam’ta Security Forces, the new version with the Imperial banner stitched where the Confederate sigil had been, like a rag to stop a hole. He was a big man with heavy wrists and a belly that said he ate at his leisure. His hair retreated from a forehead creased with the thinking he clearly seldom did. He had a stunstick at his hip and a blaster pistol he wore low like a promise.

The man stepped forward and set a palm on Tarhan’s chest, pushing the young Zabrak, not hard, but hard enough to make his back touch the wall. Tarhan took a breath and swallowed the song whole.

“Nothing!” he said, knowing the punishment for aliens associating with the rebellion. “Nothing! I wasn’t! I was—" 
The man’s eyes narrowed as he parted his lips to speak before they widened with something between recognition and pity. “You’re one of Zerrin’s boys, ain’t ya?” he said, letting go as he stepped back as if someone had called his name. “Zerrin Vahs. Used to be captain of the local riot forces…”

Tarhan rubbed at his jacket where the push had landed, and nodded. “My father, aye.” he said.

“How is he?” The man’s voice went solemn, the way men talk about ill kin. “I heard… well, I heard what they did to him. ‘Deemed surplus.’”

Tarhan nodded. “He’s looking,” he said. “For a new job.”

“Hmm.” The man’s mouth made a shape that wanted to be pity and settled for tired. “They told us about reorganization. Efficiency. Imperial standards. You say the words enough it sounds like a prayer. New flag, new stripes, same old blisters. Zebb.” He tapped his chest with two fingers. “Sergeant Zebb.”

“Tarhan,” Tarhan said, as if the sergeant did not know. He tried to make his shoulders settle away from the wall.

Zebb nodded at the alley mouth where the neon cast pale shapes on the wet floor. “Tell your old man I said hello… and mind where you sing, Tarhan Vahs,” he said. “I know where that tune is from, boy, and the Imperials—” He lifted a hand and let it fall. “They don’t have an ear for humor. And they have a taste for handing out hard labor off-world. Twenty years for a song if they say it’s sedition. Thirty for a flag the wrong way up. Thirty-five for spitting if the spit lands where it shouldn’t.”

He looked at Tarhan as if to put a blessing on the boy and found his hand empty instead. “Tell your father… tell him I wish him luck. And tell him I had no say, none of us did… It’s the Empire did all that nasty business.”

“Aye? And yet you still wear their uniform,” Tarhan said before he could stop himself, and flicked a glance at the new banner stitched on Zebb’s sleeve.

Zebb looked at it too, as if surprised to find it there. “Aye,” he said. “Somebody’s got to hold the door while the wolves pass… I still serve Nam’ta, and when these rebels are gone the Imps will leave us to ourselves again too…” He said, his eyes glazing over as if that is what he told himself to sleep at night. He shifted on his feet. “Go on home, boy. And be careful with your songs.” He hesitated. “Maybe stick to the old ones. The ones we sang before the cords on our throats grew  so tight.”


Tarhan slid out of the alley’s pinch and back into the street, and Zebb did not follow. He thought of telling his father about the encounter and then thought of the way his father’s mouth did not make much of smiles since dismissal, and kept the thought in his pocket instead.

The housing blocks rose with the dull authority of bad news, their faces pocked from decades of edits and undoings, laundry lines pulled like tripwires across inner courtyards. Since the dismissal they had moved into the three-room that barely took the couch they had and a table a cousin had given them begrudgingly. His little brother’s school was three stops farther, his mother said she liked the walk, and Tarhan pretended to believe her.

From two streets away he saw the smoke. Not the cooking smoke or the cold-weather ghost of bad heaters, but the clean, strong scent of something meant to frighten. He smelled the ash before he reached the corner. Then he heard the orders and saw them. Real soldiers; Imperial, the color of storms. They made triangles at the entrances with their bodies, lines tight and rifles held in the bored alert of men who expect to shoot, and might just do so if it would end the tedious task ahead.

They had surrounded the neighborhood, armored speeders and prison shuttles nearby. A corridor to block off any escape as the rest of their unit went to work.

The people who lived there, most of them aliens, were being hustled down the stairs by squads and stripped of belts and shoelaces as if they might hang themselves on the way to the shuttles. Taken out of their homes; told to leave to the shuttles. Once arriving outside, hands were bound in bright flex that cut skin like wire.

Tarhan could see blinds were torn from windows and the rooms behind laid out like organs, everything intimate and wrong under the open look of soldiers who didn’t see. Suitcases packed by those with more time to prepare as the Imperials made their way through the housing blocks were opened on the staircases and balconies, the contents poured into communal piles on the concrete, then kicked apart with the toes of boots. “No baggage!” one of the Imperials barked, flatly, as if the word had been a rebellion that needed to be stamped out.

The voice was echoed by another, then another. “No baggage!” A little girl cried because a soldier had taken her doll and thrown it into the pile that used to be breakfast bowls and shirts.

Somebody’s holo-radio played a dance song and then stuttered into static. A man tried to pick up a photograph that had slid and received a baton across the wrist that left a purple welt in the shape of a country he did not know. There was blaster fire somewhere inside, short and efficient, and then another burst like punctuation.

Tarhan stopped as if his bones had been pulled out and the meat left to learn balance. The world narrowed until it had room for only two faces: his mother’s, the set of her mouth when she bent over Eolat’s shoes, and Eolat’s, sticky with breakfast, his horns little budding curls as soft as any child’s hair. They were inside. Of course they were inside. They would have been at home waiting for him to finish and say how quiet it had been and they would have pretended it was enough.

As he watched the smoke rise from the housing block echoing with blaster fire and the cold shouts of Imperial diction he knew. Knew as well as the singer on the rooftop had known the next line of his song. That his mother was in that smoke and his brother besides her.

“Mom! Eolat!” he shouted, and the sound of his brother’s name in his own mouth gave him courage or made him twice the fool. He did not care which.

He ran forward…]]> <![CDATA[[IC] Holo-Diary - Gorbargh of Lorrad]]> https://www.horuset.com/showthread.php?tid=1391 Sun, 03 Aug 2025 14:13:54 +0000 Andnoa]]> https://www.horuset.com/showthread.php?tid=1391 >> STATUS: INTEGRITY 100%
>> SOURCE: PERSONAL DEVICE // Andnoa
>> OPENING FILE...ENTRY 328: The Inevitable Death of Lord Teius Horuset

Sitting in a chair by his fireplace, Sith Andnoa would speak to a holorecording device. His face would be marked with lines of black, as the echoes of the power he had conjured mere hours ago would wrack him and he would be naked from the waist up, revealing various tattoos etched onto his form. Not Sith in origin, they would speak to a life prior to this, a low level gangster on the Industrial Hellscape in which he was raised.

"It is the middle of the thirty first year since the Sacking of Coruscant. Two days prior to today, Lord Teius Horuset lost his life. He was slain by a rather excellent bit of Trakata from the now Lord Kelsa at the culmination of a duel by all rights he should have won."

Andnoa would pause for a long moment, contemplating.

"Inevitable, however that he would lose it. I have spoken to several other Sith and Lord since then who seemed confused at the result. Teius Horuset was by all rights a powerful Sith Lord, Uncle to the Dark Lord and had served the Empire for over half a century. He procreated and his children now serve too, those who still live at any rate. He did everything the Traditionalist elements of the Sith would expect one of noble blood to do. He mastered a lightsaber form, lead wars, opposed the infiltration of "alien filth" and yet... He lost to one such an alien. To the Pureblood mind, this is unthinkable, yet to the mind of one such as I, I knew he would die the moment I saw him arrive."

"I present my thesis: The Traditionalist Mind does not understand the Alien Mind and thus is doomed."

A short barking laugh.

"Ha! Now that is heresy worth purging, for those who believe that heresy exists. Luvane would string me up for that. But it is exactly because he would that the thesis is true. Let us look to our first example: Xulia Horuset, daughter of Teius and fierce traditionalist. While those words are true they mask a failing. Xulia Horuset is utterly incapable of supplication. She is inflexible to the point where when asked to perform a task to earn the right to new Sorcery, she refused to do so and still expected a reward! For it was her birth right to learn Sorcery. No little half-breed whelp could deny her that. She was of the Golden Sun! So the little half-breed whelp denied her Sorcery and now she claims she never wanted it in the first place, a pathetic lie to salve her wounded Ego."

Andnoa would shake his head.

"If she were capable of humility, she would be on her way to Sorcery now. I was considering her as an Apprentice, to re-ignite the fires of the Dark Side in House Horuset, yet even with all the advantages she had, she could not see past herself. And now I have Safiyya Tanamart, an Apprentice who is utterly without ego. In fact, let us make her example number two. Safiyya may have a drop of the black blood of Korriban in her, but she does not act like it. She is calm and quiet, even as the fire burns brightly within her. When ordered to perform a task she performs it. She is willing to do anything to grow and deepen her relationship with the dark side. Why is this? Humility. She knows she is an Apprentice and she has seen what I am capable of. She has seen hardship on her home-world and she knows that to learn from me is the quickest path to power and as such she has taken to her place with gusto. I am not so blinded by myself as to not see the irony. If it were not for Xulia, I would not have Safiyya. The Dark Side has turned a weak Red Sith away from the path to power and a human towards it. This is Teius' fault. He only saw an Alien reaching above his station. He did not see the true horror of what Kelsa is until it was too late."

Andnoa punctuate his words by slamming his fist into his armrest.

"Now to another of his children, Krassus Horuset. When dearest daddy was slain, Krassus decided to rush at Kelsa, drawing his weapon to strike. He now sits in the medical bay with his chest caved in and lightning burns, the latter from me, the former from Kelsa. This was a poor move, rushed into without thought out of sentiment... Ah sentiment, the second of Teius' faults. But, I hear you say, Teius was beyond sentiment. He proved that when he interrupted his own son's wedding. Ah, I respond, no he was not. What is traditionalism but affection for the past? The Sith of the past failed. Learn their lessons and move on. To go back and try again everything they did is a sure-fire method to another great failure that the Empire can not afford."

"But Krassus' foolishness did not begin there. In the weeks before Kelsa's ascension, it came to my attention that he was spreading rumours about Kelsa, no doubt on the orders of His Master, the Dark Lord. A test or a genuine attempt to foil Kelsa? I can not say. But the presence of Teius is no accident. Call me a conspiracy theorist but I believe the Dark Lord has been pushing behind the scenes against Kelsa. Not with her full might of course, but more than she would against any pureblood rising the ranks. Two aliens on the Pentarchy? Unthinkable to her antiquated mind. The next alien will be the most difficult to push up there, for a majority of aliens would have her Dear Father rising from his grave. But then a Pentarchy itself would, to my understanding. To share power? Impossible!"

"But of course, necessary. For we now rise to the next problem that Teius did not see, the rot that is the fault of the Dark Lord. She still believes a majority of her powerbase is traditionalist, rather than just going through the motions. She can not see the truth because her only eyes are the likes of Krassus, who is blind and she can not learn this for herself because she is so absent as to be a non-factor. What would I ascribe this to? Lack of humility and abundance of sentiment are taken so lets call this complacency on her part. The assumption that because she has power today that she will tomorrow without lifting a finger or maintaining that power for herself. Teius believed an alien rising above him could be swatted away like a gnat, for his power could not be approached by aliens. Both niece and uncle were mistaken."

Andnoa would go to turn off the camera again before stopping and thinking for some minutes. He would finally speak in a softer voice.

"There is another example, one closer to home that has not been adequately analysed, but serves as a predictive warning of what was to come and what might yet be. And that is Zarchas and Tarimra. Tarimra had a great many of the same faults as his father and siblings. Egoism, Traditionalism and a false sense of indestructability. Zarchas, for his flaws, shattered that view. A former slave yet a younger and superior sorcerer to the Golden Child of the Golden Sun. And ultimately despite the wound he left to Lord Saltaeon, Zarchas was the better Sith for that reason. I predict more death to come. Not only the names I have named, but other red skinned Sith are vulnerable in precisely the same way. Rhysand springs to mind, Tutki... They do not understand the Sith any more. They only understand the Sith a thousand years ago."

"Let us now explore that weakness. Why do the Red Sith have such overwhelming self-belief to the point of self destruction? Because it is drilled into them at every point of their lives. This is why the aliens are so quickly rising. They are told all their lives they are worthless scum and overcome this weakness to become Sith. They have long since abandoned dignity in the service of power. They will do anything to survive, abandon honour or decency, abandon old teachings, anything if it lets them see another day. Desperation is power in and of itself and those who can not comprehend the depths of despair are doomed to failure."

"The very structure of Sith training and of House Horuset itself are killing the Sith Purebloods. Thus Teius died because he could not see the change had happened and even if he could have, he would not react to it."

A laugh once again.

"Goodness me, that is funny. If they want to rectify it then, they must do the unthinkable: Treat the Red Sith like the Aliens are treated. No more special privileges, no more secret meetings or family bonds to weaken them. Force every Sith to abandon their family name and dignity upon entry to the Academy. True Sith are born in the depths hardship so this false comfort has made the Pure weaker. Vayek learned that when we clashed as acolytes."

The screen cuts to black.

[VISUAL END – static flood]

[AUDIO TERMINATED – no further signal detected]
>> END FRAGMENT.
>> FILE STATUS: LOCKED]]> >> STATUS: INTEGRITY 100%
>> SOURCE: PERSONAL DEVICE // Andnoa
>> OPENING FILE...ENTRY 328: The Inevitable Death of Lord Teius Horuset

Sitting in a chair by his fireplace, Sith Andnoa would speak to a holorecording device. His face would be marked with lines of black, as the echoes of the power he had conjured mere hours ago would wrack him and he would be naked from the waist up, revealing various tattoos etched onto his form. Not Sith in origin, they would speak to a life prior to this, a low level gangster on the Industrial Hellscape in which he was raised.

"It is the middle of the thirty first year since the Sacking of Coruscant. Two days prior to today, Lord Teius Horuset lost his life. He was slain by a rather excellent bit of Trakata from the now Lord Kelsa at the culmination of a duel by all rights he should have won."

Andnoa would pause for a long moment, contemplating.

"Inevitable, however that he would lose it. I have spoken to several other Sith and Lord since then who seemed confused at the result. Teius Horuset was by all rights a powerful Sith Lord, Uncle to the Dark Lord and had served the Empire for over half a century. He procreated and his children now serve too, those who still live at any rate. He did everything the Traditionalist elements of the Sith would expect one of noble blood to do. He mastered a lightsaber form, lead wars, opposed the infiltration of "alien filth" and yet... He lost to one such an alien. To the Pureblood mind, this is unthinkable, yet to the mind of one such as I, I knew he would die the moment I saw him arrive."

"I present my thesis: The Traditionalist Mind does not understand the Alien Mind and thus is doomed."

A short barking laugh.

"Ha! Now that is heresy worth purging, for those who believe that heresy exists. Luvane would string me up for that. But it is exactly because he would that the thesis is true. Let us look to our first example: Xulia Horuset, daughter of Teius and fierce traditionalist. While those words are true they mask a failing. Xulia Horuset is utterly incapable of supplication. She is inflexible to the point where when asked to perform a task to earn the right to new Sorcery, she refused to do so and still expected a reward! For it was her birth right to learn Sorcery. No little half-breed whelp could deny her that. She was of the Golden Sun! So the little half-breed whelp denied her Sorcery and now she claims she never wanted it in the first place, a pathetic lie to salve her wounded Ego."

Andnoa would shake his head.

"If she were capable of humility, she would be on her way to Sorcery now. I was considering her as an Apprentice, to re-ignite the fires of the Dark Side in House Horuset, yet even with all the advantages she had, she could not see past herself. And now I have Safiyya Tanamart, an Apprentice who is utterly without ego. In fact, let us make her example number two. Safiyya may have a drop of the black blood of Korriban in her, but she does not act like it. She is calm and quiet, even as the fire burns brightly within her. When ordered to perform a task she performs it. She is willing to do anything to grow and deepen her relationship with the dark side. Why is this? Humility. She knows she is an Apprentice and she has seen what I am capable of. She has seen hardship on her home-world and she knows that to learn from me is the quickest path to power and as such she has taken to her place with gusto. I am not so blinded by myself as to not see the irony. If it were not for Xulia, I would not have Safiyya. The Dark Side has turned a weak Red Sith away from the path to power and a human towards it. This is Teius' fault. He only saw an Alien reaching above his station. He did not see the true horror of what Kelsa is until it was too late."

Andnoa punctuate his words by slamming his fist into his armrest.

"Now to another of his children, Krassus Horuset. When dearest daddy was slain, Krassus decided to rush at Kelsa, drawing his weapon to strike. He now sits in the medical bay with his chest caved in and lightning burns, the latter from me, the former from Kelsa. This was a poor move, rushed into without thought out of sentiment... Ah sentiment, the second of Teius' faults. But, I hear you say, Teius was beyond sentiment. He proved that when he interrupted his own son's wedding. Ah, I respond, no he was not. What is traditionalism but affection for the past? The Sith of the past failed. Learn their lessons and move on. To go back and try again everything they did is a sure-fire method to another great failure that the Empire can not afford."

"But Krassus' foolishness did not begin there. In the weeks before Kelsa's ascension, it came to my attention that he was spreading rumours about Kelsa, no doubt on the orders of His Master, the Dark Lord. A test or a genuine attempt to foil Kelsa? I can not say. But the presence of Teius is no accident. Call me a conspiracy theorist but I believe the Dark Lord has been pushing behind the scenes against Kelsa. Not with her full might of course, but more than she would against any pureblood rising the ranks. Two aliens on the Pentarchy? Unthinkable to her antiquated mind. The next alien will be the most difficult to push up there, for a majority of aliens would have her Dear Father rising from his grave. But then a Pentarchy itself would, to my understanding. To share power? Impossible!"

"But of course, necessary. For we now rise to the next problem that Teius did not see, the rot that is the fault of the Dark Lord. She still believes a majority of her powerbase is traditionalist, rather than just going through the motions. She can not see the truth because her only eyes are the likes of Krassus, who is blind and she can not learn this for herself because she is so absent as to be a non-factor. What would I ascribe this to? Lack of humility and abundance of sentiment are taken so lets call this complacency on her part. The assumption that because she has power today that she will tomorrow without lifting a finger or maintaining that power for herself. Teius believed an alien rising above him could be swatted away like a gnat, for his power could not be approached by aliens. Both niece and uncle were mistaken."

Andnoa would go to turn off the camera again before stopping and thinking for some minutes. He would finally speak in a softer voice.

"There is another example, one closer to home that has not been adequately analysed, but serves as a predictive warning of what was to come and what might yet be. And that is Zarchas and Tarimra. Tarimra had a great many of the same faults as his father and siblings. Egoism, Traditionalism and a false sense of indestructability. Zarchas, for his flaws, shattered that view. A former slave yet a younger and superior sorcerer to the Golden Child of the Golden Sun. And ultimately despite the wound he left to Lord Saltaeon, Zarchas was the better Sith for that reason. I predict more death to come. Not only the names I have named, but other red skinned Sith are vulnerable in precisely the same way. Rhysand springs to mind, Tutki... They do not understand the Sith any more. They only understand the Sith a thousand years ago."

"Let us now explore that weakness. Why do the Red Sith have such overwhelming self-belief to the point of self destruction? Because it is drilled into them at every point of their lives. This is why the aliens are so quickly rising. They are told all their lives they are worthless scum and overcome this weakness to become Sith. They have long since abandoned dignity in the service of power. They will do anything to survive, abandon honour or decency, abandon old teachings, anything if it lets them see another day. Desperation is power in and of itself and those who can not comprehend the depths of despair are doomed to failure."

"The very structure of Sith training and of House Horuset itself are killing the Sith Purebloods. Thus Teius died because he could not see the change had happened and even if he could have, he would not react to it."

A laugh once again.

"Goodness me, that is funny. If they want to rectify it then, they must do the unthinkable: Treat the Red Sith like the Aliens are treated. No more special privileges, no more secret meetings or family bonds to weaken them. Force every Sith to abandon their family name and dignity upon entry to the Academy. True Sith are born in the depths hardship so this false comfort has made the Pure weaker. Vayek learned that when we clashed as acolytes."

The screen cuts to black.

[VISUAL END – static flood]

[AUDIO TERMINATED – no further signal detected]
>> END FRAGMENT.
>> FILE STATUS: LOCKED]]>