I wrote a thing, because I don't like seeing this thread going dormant, but can't think of anything interesting to discuss.
A man warned, is halfway saved.
Working as a promintent figure for a secret organization the calibre of the Abyss Watchers had many advantages, of which having access to classified information from most of the known Galaxy and invitations to even the most elitist and obscure art exhibits were merely Mitth'raw'nuruodo's most appreciated examples. To name another, the operations he oversaw were quite often stimulating, it didn't matter whether because of scale or very peculiar operative parameters, and made his work actively pleasant for the Chiss, at times even making him wonder if the Ascendacy would have ever given him anything comparable.
Then he quickly shook himself and tried to evict from his mind the subtle effects of his employer's social manipulations to ensure loyalty in her subordinates; it was somewhat startling, at first, to realise he was only relatively more resistant to the positive reinforcement techniques he had identified than those who hadn't realised the depth of their employer forethought in setting up the Watchers' virtually perfect working enviroment, nor the legths she would go to maintain its spirit.
Maybe he should have felt more shaken by the realisation than he had been, but working in the Abyss Watchers' high echelons had a tendency to cure one's perspective from egotism anyway, so in the end Thrawn had simply acknowledged what an old Wookie poet had described as "the condition of the mind enshrouded in flesh" ("wrooshoonnr 'r'rrwolow'aaur" in the original Shyriiwook, if his memory didn't fail him) and doubled his mental excercises and deprogramming routines, at times adding more light reading on the difficulties of operations deep undercover.
Still, even such lofty position had its downsides, especially when working in the field of intergalactic espionage, and some where more worrisome than others. Personally, Thrawn put receiving an urgent summon from Lady Ciaran on a private datapad he had gone to some lengths to keep secret on the "severe" side, as these things went, but that didn't mean he had any excuse not to follow her commands; for all her carefully constructed eccentricities, in the time he had known her Ciaran had always shown a very grounded perspective when assessing the urgency of military matters. Thus, he followed her instructions in all haste and arrived on Lordran with twelve chosen Seekers, as specified, on the very same evening.
Surprisingly, he was directed to a landing pad nearly a klick away from his objective, but he could easily see all other landing points were already occupied, so he figured he would simply walk to the Ariandel Administrative Center by foot, with his guards following him. As he closed in, though, something didn't to add up, from the request of comm silence to the building new coat of paint in red and white (in clear imitation of Pau'an decorations, of all things). The strangeness of the situation set Thrawn on edge and he couldn't help but slow his pace as he followed a chattering protocol droid, painted in blue, to the largest conference room in the complex.
"Your guards are dismissed and will be given quarters in the barracks, Admiral." The droid droned on as it opened the door and the sound of conversation coming from inside stopped abruptly. "You may continue on to the next room, the Lady Ciaran is waiting for you."
Thrawn nodded and entered, frowning. The room was dimly lit and covered in large curtains, obscuring the walls almost completely; the drapes were weaved in intricate patterns of purple and black, shimmering in a peculiar way he knew from experience indicated the art on them could be seen only in the ultraviolet spectrum. Except for the two doors, only five small alcoves were along the walls were not veiled by the drapery, each with a waist-high effigy of a different being inside; it took a few seconds for him to identify them as original statues of the five Umbaran psychopomps, the Nessta. It made sense in a way, given the hangings, but the Chiss couldn't help but wonder why the his employer had furnished the room as an alien place of worship.
As he took the first steps towards the door which would hopefully lead him to his employer, the conversations around him started up again and the Admiral received many nods of acknowledgement from the people in the room. Looking at them, Thrawn was not surprised he could recognize them all by sight, and most of them by name: they were all Watchers, naturally, but from disparate branches of the organization and were all dressed in formal civilian wear. Warily, his mind tried to solve the mystery of this strange gathering; it obviously wasn't an emergency strategic council like the message he received had suggested, but unless Ciaran had an improbable religious awakening, he simply had no idea of what exactly was happening around him, and this unnerved him beyond measure.
He found a common element soon enough, though it wasn't a promising one: again and again, as he walked through the crowd, he was stopped by this or that Watcher, who was just discussing the time spent under Thrawn's command with another guest and wanted him to corroborate their story, desisting only when he said Lady CIaran was waiting for him.
Finally arriving at the door, the Admiral felt much less uncertain, but if anything much grimmer: all the people present in the room had been his subordinates at one point or the another, and all were telling stories of his service with them, which didn't promise anything good for his upcoming meeting. Inconspicuously palming his holdout blaster, the Chiss quickly opened the door before him and stepped inside.
The sound of a fire and a soft thumph were the first impression of the new room, as the bright light inside blinded him for a moment. Next, he heard the door behind him close and a soft greeting come from the front.
"Mitth'raw'nuruodo." The voice was Ciaran's, but Thrawn had to stop for a second at the sound. He hadn't know she could speak his actual name with such ease.
Squinting slightly, he took in the scene as his employer had undoubtably arranged it up for him. She was walking out from behind an exquisitely crafted brazier; it was about two meters in length and one in height, entirely made out of light metals and crystal in such way that the fire almost seemed suspended mid-air; she wore a rich green dress with a golden shawl covered with carefully stitched black figures performing a complex dance, while elaborate light games projected complex shadow plays on the white walls. All Sephi art, he recognized, she was dressed as a traditional Sephi matriarch and her soft smile reassured him not one bit, nor did the Watcher uniform now burning in the fire.
"Lady Ciaran" he greeted her Back, "I arrived as fast as I could."
"And not a second late," she answered walking towards a pair of armchairs in white and gold. "Come, sit. I have a mission for you."
To exacerbate his nerves, what followed was a completely mundane briefing for a long range patrol of CNS space; Ciaran detailed every step of the operation, accepting a circumspect Thrawn's own suggestions in the details but keeping the overall route very close to her initial plan. Eventually, after a couple of hours, the Chiss was dismissed and went for the door, but stopped just before leaving to ask the question which had burned in his mind up to that point.
"May I know the reason for this meeting's peculiar... features?"
"I thought it would have been clear to you, Thrawn," the Miraluka's smile didn't outwardly change, but was suddently much more predatory. "But I guess sometimes I can outsmart myself... maybe I was trying to learn your own tricks, or just wanted to mess with you. I am well known for doing it, after all."
"Somehow, I doubt it was something as simple as that" responded the Admiral, who had realised long before anything Ciaran was publicly well known for was almost always a trap for the unwary, to her retreating form as she walked unhurriedly towards a seemingly empty wall.
"Well, I'm certain it'll come to you eventually." The woman walked through the wall, briefly disrupting the hologram hiding a long corridor where Abysswalker Torgh waited for her, leaving behind only an echoing "good night, Mitth'raw'nuruodo."
Said Chiss started retracing his way out of the building, deeeply in thought and halfway convinced the spymistress had crafted an elaborate rouse to confuse him and keep him in one place while something he would have objected to took place, when a particular junction brought back to him forgotten memories of another corridor in white and red. He stopped as his breath caught in his throat and gooseflesh rippled down his body, while his mind finally put together the puzzle all around him.
Taking a deep breath, Thrawn started marching down the aisle, rapidly formulating his next plan of action, all the while damning himself for taking so long to find the solution. From the kilometre long march with twelve honor guards, to the hall full of colleagues remembering his deeds and the "old" matron burning an empty uniform, Ciaran had stitched together from pieces all around the Galaxy a functional parallel to a traditional Chiss wake for the dead, and he had not even noticed.
Considering his discussion with said Miraluka and how he had been invited to the ceremony, Mitth'raw'nuruodo decided he would follow scrupolously his orders for the coming patrol. Fruthermore, he would edit his next report to the Ascendancy to be significantly less detailed on the Abyss Watchers' operations in the Unknown Regions, not even bother to verify the viability of his various exfiltration plans and very pointedly not organise new ones for a while.
After all, no man was let walk away from his own funeral twice.
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