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Fallen Empires -- An Old Republic Era adventure (Star Wars)

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I expect that she would be the last to admit it, but I do rather suspect that Darth Nyx has, in fact, "gotten married and settled down". At least compared to Darth Nyx's "rebellious phase".
 
Aunty Shi Ping said:
I expect that she would be the last to admit it, but I do rather suspect that Darth Nyx has, in fact, "gotten married and settled down". At least compared to Darth Nyx's "rebellious phase".
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I'd say that she was an Imperial and it's in fact Arlunia who had a rebellious phase, but it's three thousand years too early for that joke.
 
Aunty Shi Ping said:
I expect that she would be the last to admit it, but I do rather suspect that Darth Nyx has, in fact, "gotten married and settled down". At least compared to Darth Nyx's "rebellious phase".
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Raiseth said:
I'd say that she was an Imperial and it's in fact Arlunia who had a rebellious phase, but it's three thousand years too early for that joke.
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So, like... Nyx is a coldly methodical presence with a strong practical streak. (Which makes her not very likely to kill people just because she's in a bad mood, but does also lend her a sort of unsmiling, serial killer intensity that Arlunia finds hot and most people find scary). She never really had a rebellious phase. Prior to falling out with her master, she was pretty committed to playing the long game to learn as much as she could from her.

Arlunia, by contrast, was always personable, energetic and impulsive, to the point that she had a lot of trouble with conventional Jedi teachings until she found her own heterodox way to them over time.

These things actually balance each other out very well.

"So, I assume we can't just kill them."

"... No, no we are definitely not killing them!"

"You don't need to give me that look, I said 'can't'."
 
Gazetteer said:
but does also lend her a sort of unsmiling, serial killer intensity that Arlunia finds hot and most people find scary
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I guess it was hopeless from the start, the Jedi Code didn't even stand a chance
Lord Nyx is just raw unmitigated sexiness in humanoid shape as far as Arlunia is concerned
 
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033: Last Standing
  • Threadmarks
    • Try to occupy the soldiers, letting Avress handle Jyte: 18

    Intercept Jyte, leave Avress and the others to deal with the soldiers: 15

    Skylah

    "Wait here!" you say to Amira. Despite the day's many strains and bruises, you're up and running down hill before either she or Brenby can stop you, Imperius's unlit saberstaff clutched in one hand.

    "Skylah!" Benby calls after you. He takes a step as if to follow, then gasps, grabbing the boulder you'd all been sheltering behind for support. That might be more than just a twisted ankle. There's no time to check in on him, though, no time to stop and talk it through or make a plan. At the bottom of this hill, Avress is standing protectively in front of the two Pantorans, guarding them against a group of soldiers and an approaching Sith apprentice. The Force guides your path down the twisted and broken hillside, keeping you from killing yourself despite your breakneck speed. You leap from fallen tree to boulder to tumbled piece of ancient masonry.

    You make your final leap, one side of the purple saberstaff humming to life in your hands, clearing Avress's head easily and landing on the far side of her. You're just in time to deflect a blaster bolt back into the chest of the soldier who fired it. The helmeted woman goes down with a scream — your third kill, now. Or even fourth, if you count Lord Myre.

    "I'll cover you! You take Jyte!" you tell Avress.

    "You!" Jyte snarls, rounding on you. Her attention nearly costs her — you hear the back half of Avress's saberstaff come alive, spinning through the air to just barely be stopped by the lightsaber Jyte stole from you. You can't turn back to look at them, though. Your own task won't let you look anywhere else.

    You advance on the soldiers, and one of them shouts: "Scatter!" They all instantly dart in different directions, finding cover in the mess of a hillside. They barely even pause in their blaster fire, now aimed squarely at you. Coming as it is from all different directions, it's hard to address one without opening yourself up to be shot in the back.

    "Ah, good," says Imperius, "even if this is the sad state the Sith Empire is reduced to, they still know how to fight a Jedi."

    "I'm not a Jedi!" you shout, flowing through anti-blaster forms, the long handle of the saberstaff strange in your hands, even held one-sided.

    She is unconcerned by this distinction. "They don't know that, though. Be careful with the weapon, please — you're holding one of the oldest functioning Sith lightsabers in existence. It's been in my family in some form for thousands of years."

    "But, I thought you used to be a slave!" you say, still mostly distracted by your attempts to avoid being riddled with holes.

    "Correct. However, despite the old Imperial propaganda, slaves are not a naturally occurring resource. They are made, not born."

    Ouch! "Right, sorry, I— Sorry!" In your defence, most Imperial slaves don't have ancient Sith blood regardless. It's not the sort of thing you can exactly dispute, though, especially not while in combat like this.

    You're holding your own, but you still can't even spare the time to check on Avress or the others. Fortunately, a lighter blaster bolt comes sailing past you from behind, clipping one of the insurgents. "Keep covering me!" Keel calls.

    "Sure, I can do that!" you shout back. That's the hope, anyway.

    ==========

    Avress

    You're tired, battered, and pushed to your last nerve. You've spent far too much of a terrible two days in the company of multiple unrepentant Sith who you've had to accept as allies, all while your master is off being subjected to Force knows what at the hands of others like them. You've been compelled to abandon a fellow Jedi to die while Skylah — whatever Skylah even is — threw all caution to the wind to go back and save her. Now at last, things are simple. Behind you there are people to protect. In front of you is an evildoer. No temporary alliances or confusing ambiguity, just this woman's sword against your own.

    "Surrender, Sith," you say. "Your master is dead. Your troops are scattered."

    The Sith smiles at you, her eyes dancing with cruel anticipation. "A charming offer. But I think I'll carve a few pieces off of you instead. Then the other two aliens. Then Brenby, so I'll be the last Sith left on Tyrost. The mouthy girl last, I have plans for her." Jyte flexes her maimed hand as she mentions Skylah, seeming to exalt in the pain from the motion. The stumps of her missing fingers are concealed beneath kolto-infused bandages. Her eyes never leave you, whoever else she's talking about, like a predator eyeing its next meal.

    "Very well, then," you say, face hardening. "You leave me no choice."

    Her smile turns savage, her slim form positively shaking with sheer, bloody-minded impatience for a fight. All at once, in this single moment of respite before Jyte falls upon you again, you look into those rabid eyes and understand something: You are looking at the natural endpoint of your own greatest shortcomings. Your own impatience, arrogance, desire to prove yourself in combat. This feral beast of a human is where such things end if they are left unchecked. It's a stark warning, disturbing in its own way. It also brings with it a startling insight: You know how to fight this woman.

    With a battlecry, Jyte lunges for you, every bit as skillful with her left hand as she would have been with her right. You meet her calmly, a tree in a storm that will sway, but never break. You have the quiet satisfaction of watching her mouth twist in frustration as her every murderous blow is turned aside by your unwavering Soresu guard.

    Your master warned you when you first told him you intended to build a saberstaff. There are drawbacks to such a design: More unwieldy and less versatile than a traditional lightsaber, in truth closer to a polearm than a sword. Such a weapon does have its advantages, though, and you lean on them for all they're worth. You don't let her close with you, using your saberstaff's long handle as well as your greater reach to ward her off, countering at angles that would be otherwise impossible.

    Jyte stabs at your chest. You block, sliding back out of the way. She circles around to go for your arm, and you spin away from her, your followup forcing her back before she can do as much as she'd like. You don't pursue as she retreats, this or any time.

    "What's with that expression, like you don't even care?" Jyte demands. "I'll give you something to scream about in a moment!" You don't give her anything. No aggression, no banter, no fear. Only resolve, and the peace of the Force guiding your hand. You can tell that she absolutely hates it.

    "Just die, you alien filth!" There's a madness in her eyes now, practically glowing with malevolence and the Dark Side. A tunnel-vision rage that precludes everything aside from killing you. You expect it to make her sloppy: It doesn't.

    She goes in for a low stab, and you trap her lightsaber easily, the warm orange of her blade crackling as it meets the green of your own, just like a dozen times before. Ahead of any further response from you, Jyte flips up into the air, executing an impossible cartwheel in the process. Her durasteel-toed boot cracks hard against your jaw, and when she comes down, she's inside your guard. You jerk your head to the side, taking a plasma burn on your neck instead of a decapitating blow. Her knee slams into your gut a second later, driving the breath from you, forcing you back.

    "Not so serene now, are you? Not so above it—" A rock, of all things, strikes Jyte square in the temple. She gasps, staggers under the blow. Without even thinking, you carve her chest wide open, and she crumples lifelessly to the ground.

    Still stunned, you stare at Jyte's body uncomprehendingly for a fraction of a second, before looking up to see Elra staring right back at you. She's breathing hard, the same hand that threw the rock still shaking. Nearby, you see Skylah still shielding you and the Pantorans, several of the soldiers dead to her and Keel's efforts. Despite your pain, you tense to leap to her aid.

    "Stand down!"

    Your head jerks up to find Brenby hobbling down the slope toward you. For a moment, you think he's talking to you, until he follows up the command by thrusting out a hand and telekinetically choking one of the soldiers. "I said, stand down!"

    To your surprise, with only a moment's hesitation, they do. Blaster rifles hit the dirt, hands go up into the air. The soldier he's choking lets out a pained gasp as he can breathe again, sliding limply to the ground. "Thank you, my lord!" he croaks. You realise what this means after a brief confusion: Brenby is the only Sith left standing. These people will follow his lead, at least for now, for all that they'd been trying to kill you all a moment before. The lingering depravity of a nation created by Sith.

    Still, it means that, for the time being, things are fine. Brenby limps over to 'his' people. Keel drops fully to the ground, panting. Skylah just stands there, tiny shoulders slumping, bone-tired. You deactivate your weapon, and without the background hum the silence rings almost painfully in your ears amidst the smoke and death and rubble of this place.

    Elra is the one you don't expect. She throws her arms around you the moment you're no longer holding a lit saberstaff, looking up at you with those yellow eyes in that gorgeous face. "You're hurt!" she says.

    "I'm fine, thanks to you," you tell her, a heroic smile crossing your lips. You hope it's heroic, anyway. Elra doesn't pull away, or break eye contact. Neither of you do. If anything, she seems to be getting closer. Oh no. Oh no. You can feel heat rushing to your face.

    Article:
    What do you do???

    [ ] Remember that there is no passion, there is— oh no why are you kissing her
    [ ] Create an extremely awkward distraction
    [ ] Explain Jedi views of non-attachment to her, badly. Skylah will 'help'
     
  • Threadmarks
    • [X] Explain Jedi views of non-attachment to her, badly. Skylah will 'help'
     
    [X] Remember that there is no passion, there is— oh no why are you kissing her
     
    [x] Create an extremely awkward distraction
    To fit with my general opposition to all the shipping that goes on around here, I feel compelled to go for option three, but the panic-response is just so much more amusing to me.
     
    [X] Remember that there is no passion, there is— oh no why are you kissing her

    :V

    Good fight scenes! I liked the sith minions standing down when Brenby was the only one left. It feels like this kind of battle field promotion must be a time honored tradition, with sith.
     
    Hm, I'd like to spend a bit longer on buildup, but I also feel like Skylah has the role of "disaster" pretty well covered for this story. A second would feel redundant.
     
    [X] Remember that there is no passion, there is— oh no why are you kissing her

    *shrugs* Probably the suspension bridge effect. But who cares!
     
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    [X] Remember that there is no passion, there is— oh no why are you kissing her

    Ah, Avress has such corrupting company! She's falling in with a bad crowd, you know. Also yeah, totally misattribution , probably.
     
    [X] Explain Jedi views of non-attachment to her, badly. Skylah will 'help'

    Sure, sure, kisses are nice, but this scene sounds like it would be hilarious, which is better.
     
    Gazetteer said:
    Explain Jedi views of non-attachment to her, badly. Skylah will 'help'
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    "Jedi aren't actually forbidden to have sex with people, it's just there should be no attachments involved. You know, like love and marriage. So you could say that Avress is totally okay to sleep with you, she just won't be able to make an honest woman out of you if she follows the Code!"

    "Skylah. Stop. Talking."
     
    [] Remember that there is no passion, there is— oh no why are you kissing her

    in the noble brightness of a galaxy long long ago there are only makeouts

    EDIT:
    [X] Explain Jedi views of non-attachment to her, badly. Skylah will 'help'
    ok ok this sounds hilarious, you got me
     
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