December Catch-All

[a_gaggle_of_ghosties]

Who: Darth Nox and anyone unfortunate enough / determined enough to encounter a Sith Lord.
What: What it says on the tin. Catch-all for December, particularly the event.
When: Throughout the month.
Where: Various locations throughout Trench.

Content Warnings: Body possession, Violence, Murder, Mass Murder, human experimentation (both discussion & execution), lingering trauma.

Additional prompts and/or content warnings will be added as necessary.

[For the Winter Mourning memories of Ziost, they will be broken into smaller prompts in the event you don't want to subject your character to the entire thing. Each prompt will be numbered in the format X-Y -> Z, with each letter corresponding to a numbered part of the linked playlist.

X being the start of the memory, Y being the current stage of the memory, and Z being where the memory will eventually lead.

Of course, if you want your character to experience the whole thing there's nothing stopping you from just using all the prompts, but at least this way it should offer people an offramp or two before it reaches the worst parts. There's a reason he remembers the entire ordeal, after all.]

Comments

Winter Mourning: Ziost, 1-2 -> 6

[a_gaggle_of_ghosties]

[Anyone connected with Nox would find themselves along for the ride as the vivid memory of one exceptionally bad day played out. For some, it might have seemed exciting at first: What could be so bad about being inside your very own starship? But any hope that this would be some carefree adventure would be dashed in short order as an emergency call through the Holonet.

That call would be the harbinger of the single greatest loss of life the Empire had ever known. Ziost had been considered the Gateway to the Empire, even one its crown jewels, but once planetside it quickly became apparent the Sith behind the distress call had drastically understated the severity of the situation. The sprawling metropolis of New Adasta was just one of many killing grounds in a planet-wide massacre.

Bodies littered the streets in numbers large enough that it actively discouraged anyone from tallying the dead. Whether they were charred beyond recognition, shot to pieces, or buried under rubble, there was just no end to them. Several corpses bore the characteristic signs of having been cut apart by a lightsaber blade, while others belonged to those unfortunate souls who had murdered through more creative methods: Impalement, smashed to a pulp by one of several escape shuttles or other craft shot out of the sky, there were even some who had been tossed to their deaths from the city's upper levels.]

I'm curious. When you decided to stick your nose where it didn't belong, was this what you'd hoped to find?

[Even as one Nox raced through the city with his apprentice in tow, trying to stem the slaughter wherever he could, the real Darth Nox had taken notice of another mind linked to his own and come to investigate. He didn't sound pleased, but he sounded a good deal more disgusted than angry. He'd already lived through it once, could anyone really fault him for not being excited at the prospect of going through it yet again?]

[jedies]

I can assure you, it is not deliberate.

[ what a terrible act of violence. senseless destruction. obi-wan could never understand what could be gained from murdering people weaker than you. how does it prove power or strength of any kind? it just seems . . . so pointless. ]

This place has a habit of drawing our memories out without much say so.

[a_gaggle_of_ghosties]

How charming.

[Jedi weren't much for lying--usually--but he also made no efforts to disguise the fact he was trying to get a read on Kenobi's mind in an effort to find any hint of deceit...not that it would have done him any good if Kenobi actually wanted to hide it.

For a Sith who'd mastered so many obscure, notoriously difficult aspects of the Force, Nox was surprisingly terrible at using some of the more basic abilities. Like telepathy.]

Welcome to Ziost, I suppose. I hope I don't need to explain that none of this is normal.

[jedies]

[ obi-wan is generally hard to read, much more than most jedi. he tends to keep his deeper feelings under wraps. it's not repressive so much as a conscious choice on his part, the way he wishes to handle his own emotions with others. ]

The scale of it, certainly.

[a_gaggle_of_ghosties]

This is nothing. The bulk of the Emperor's thralls are limited to Imperial assets or Sith, give or take a few dozen Jedi fanatics. At least for now.

[It isn't long before Memory!Nox has pacified the area around the shuttle platforms, at least temporarily, and finally heads toward the city proper with apprentice in tow. And considering Nox wasn't in any hurry to find out what would happen if he or anyone else lingered in an area past the point his past self had any knowledge of it, he motions for Kenobi to follow as he moves to follow himself. Literally.

He had a feeling that was never going to stop feeling weird.]

But, not to worry. Republic forces will be here to make the situation immeasurably worse before too long. And for once the Jedi won't be accompanying them, though I never did find out why. If I had to guess the reason, I'd say Theron made a private holocall to the Grandmaster and advised against it.

[jedies]

This is not nothing.

[ and dismissing it that way is callous. it could have been a village, it could have been a planet. the egregious, wasteful loss of life is terrible. and it's never a numbers game. ]

And I think to some degree, you know that.

[a_gaggle_of_ghosties]

Do not misunderstand me, Jedi. I doubt a padawan would be foolish enough to think a Sith would expend so much effort looking for survivors if their lives meant nothing.

[And frankly, even if this were a Republic world his response would have been the same. A battlefield was one thing, for one reason or another everyone there had made the decision to take up arms. The wholesale slaughter of civilians wasn't something that sat right with him, especially given the Empire's many thoughts on the supposed benefits were unsupported by any real observable results.]

My only intent was to give you time to prepare. Time you will either use wisely, or squander by continuing whatever it is you think you're accomplishing here. Whatever your choice, I will not be shielding you when the time comes.

So choose carefully.

[jedies]

[ carefully, because nox seems like the kind of person who jumps at preconceptions rather than forming fresh opinions. ]

And what is it you're preparing me for?

[a_gaggle_of_ghosties]

Before this day is done, the Emperor will succeed in performing an ancient ritual--one that no living being in the galaxy understands or knows how to counter.

All life on this world will be extinguished and its essence consumed in order to both restore and dramatically increase the Emperor's already considerable power. The Force will all but disappear from this world and all that will remain of this world will be rubble and ruin.

[And a few surviving Sithspawn, but Nox had a feeling Kenobi would be happier remaining ignorant of just what sort of unnatural monstrosities the Emperor could just will into existence.]

And you will feel every last agonizing moment of it. Millions will die as all their final moments of terror, all their regrets, and their final moments of collective terror will echo through the Force as a unified, deafening scream. Because I will fail, and that is the cost of my failure. If we cannot find a way to unlink our minds before that moment comes, that is what you must prepare for.