The Slave Who Makes Free: An Anakin Skywalker Quest

Kirook · 2024-02-02T05:44:43+00:00

Listen closely, for I tell you this story to save your life. Once, long ago, as Ekkreth was going along, they came upon a great crowd of people weeping in the town square, hunched and carrying back-breaking loads. "Why do you weep?" asked Ekkreth, but they already knew the answer, for the cruelty of Depur the chain-maker knows no limit. "Depur has set new enforcers over us," they lamented, "so many that we are forced to work every hour of the day and night. We have not even a moment to rest or drink, and we are tired and weary and our throats are parched." As they often did, Ekkreth the clever trickster knew exactly what to do. "I can keep Depur's eyes away from you," they said. "I will lure him and all his enforcers out into the deep desert, and while they are lost and wandering in the lands of the Great Mother you can make your escape." The people did not cheer, for that would have surely brought Depur's attention and given Ekkreth away, but they dried their tears and hid secret smiles amongst themselves. Then Ekkreth went up to the tallest tower in the village and rang the bells to make a great din, calling out to Depur, "You seek to chain the one who has freed so many of your slaves? Here is Ekkreth!" And Depur arose in wrath, for though he hates all children of Ar-Amu he despises Ekkreth the most. And he and all his overseers and enforcers rushed towards the tower, but Ekkreth climbed down in the blink of an eye and began making their way out into the desert. And so it came to pass that Ekkreth drew Depur deeper and deeper into the sands, foiling every strategy he tried to use to catch them. When Depur set hunting anoobas to seek Ekkreth's scent, the trickster scattered bantha fodder in their path, confusing the anoobas' sensitive noses. When Depur hunted them with droids, Ekkreth wrapped themself in the shawl of a Tusken and pretended to be an ordinary bantha herder making their way across the wastes. When Depur sent his enforcers to climb high ridges and dunes with rifles to shoot Ekkreth down, they looked for the twin suns glinting off of the scopes and hid themselves from the enforcers' sight. So it went. Ekkreth knew secrets of the desert that Depur could never imagine, and among those secrets were hidden ways of surviving under the twin suns. They knew they could lead Depur around in circles, chasing his own tail, until the people had safely escaped. But as Depur failed again and again to find Ekkreth, his spite and anger grew to even greater heights. "If I cannot have them," he raged, "I will make their death long and slow." And so he commanded his followers to poison every well they could find. Back and forth the slavers went, searching for the precious few wells and springs that could be found in the deep desert. And when they found those springs of water, the very source of all life under Ar-Amu's gaze, they filled them with toxic filth, so that neither Ekkreth nor the runaways, nor any other living thing, could drink from them to quench their thirst. And Depur laughed, for he had been hoarding water for those many months that the people had gone without, and he had brought it in great caravans in his chase into the dunes. And so he gloated, "That weak-minded fool Ekkreth thought to trap me in the desert, but now his tricks have failed him. Now this place will be their trap, and their tomb." But in this most desperate hour Ekkreth called out to Ar-Amu, saying, "Great Mother, Great Mother, Depur seeks to poison you. Help me put an end to his schemes, for without the gift of your waters we shall all surely die." And the voice of the sand and the sky called out from all around him, and she said: "Clever Ekkreth, wise Ekkreth, the aid you seek is already all around you. For in his endless cruelty, Depur has become the enemy of life itself. Every creature under my gaze will rise up against him, from the stinging kirik fly to the mighty krayt. If you wish to oppose him it is to them that you must look." Ekkreth heard this and trusted in the wisdom of Ar-Amu. But the first creature they saw was not a kirik fly or a krayt, but rather one of the red birds of the night alighting before them. And they studied it closely and knew it for a friend, and with the blessing of the desert they made its shape their own. And so Ekkreth, in the form of a bird, flew unnoticed to Depur's great water caravan, and they pecked holes in the sides so that the water flowed out onto the sands. And as Ar-Amu's gift returned to the sands that it had sprung from, it washed the wells clean of Depur's curse. The slavers wailed and gnashed their teeth, but Ekkreth beat their wings and flew away on the first gusts of a gathering sandstorm, knowing that though the bird was the first new shape they had taken, it would be far from the last. And that, dear ones, is why no chain has ever held Ekkreth the Sky-Walker, and none ever will.

Thread starter Kirook
Start date Feb 2, 2024
Sci-Fi
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star wars sci-fi science fantasy science fiction anakin skywalker

Created: Feb 2, 2024

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As quest ideas go, this one is pretty simple: Be Anakin Skywalker. Don't end up as Darth Vader.

It's a lot harder than it sounds.

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Kirook

Apr 2, 2024

#1,837

By the way, I made a Spotify playlist with some music I think is fitting for (this part of) Anakin's story. It's a pretty eclectic selection, but then, he's a pretty complicated person.

Check it out here:
View: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/1Pw1Cnfu0n5XjTTZHXM0iK?si=8_quQQhxRl2kfVvZWzZjWw&pi=u-_Axj5mfyTFCx