A Standup Philosopher
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Crown of Slaves 020
🕑 Added 2025-03-17 18:00:13 +0000 UTCThis wasn’t at all how I expected things to go when it came to rescuing someone from the Sith Academy, and it wasn’t what I had expected whe
This wasn’t at all how I expected things to go when it came to rescuing someone from the Sith Academy, and it wasn’t what I had expected when it came to making my way to the Tomb of Tulak Hord, either. Still, I wasn’t going to complain, given all the myriad opportunities that this provided to me, and if I recalled correctly, one of those opportunities would be getting a lightsaber quite early. From an apprentice that had tried and failed to stop the slave revolt from expanding to it’s current size, only to die in the attempt. Bravely, but futilely, and stupidly if I was going to be honest. She had been in no position to succeed in her self-assigned mission, and while it didn’t seem to have been from the same arrogance that killed so many Sith, but instead a sense of duty, it was stupid all the same.
Of course, my Trial, the rescue mission, and the lightsaber were hardly my only goals here, and I resisted the urge to grin as I descended out of the sun into the bypass-tomb leading to the portion of the valley that Tulak’s Tomb resided in. Rather more specifically, I grinned at the weathered, balding man that was examining a small container full of relics.
“Hmm? Oh! Come closer, if you please, young acolyte.” his head came up as my footsteps echoed off of the stone, turning towards me and squinting faintly. “The winds of Korriban have torn my ears to tatters, and my eyes have grown strained and bloody in the darkness.”
An exaggeration, I could tell that much just by looking at him, but as flowery as his phrasing was, I had little doubt that his eyes and ears had been compromised by a lifetime on Korriban.
“I have spent much of my life studying the Tomb of Tulak Hord. Slept on it’s stones and searched through it’s shadows, dreamed in it’s deepest portions. Nearly every secret this place holds is mine, every scrap of knowledge and ancient wisdom. Nearly. I would ask for your help to solve the last.”
“And you are whom, exactly?” I asked, raising my eyebrows, the question an honest one. I remembered the quest, of course, but at the moment I didn’t recall his name.
“I am called Ephran Zell. For many generations, my family has dedicated themselves to studying the tombs of Korriban, travelling from one to another to learn the vast histories of the greatest Sith. You stand on the precipice of the maze that The Lord of Hate had constructed, to his most exacting specifications. But this maze-tomb was not built only to hold his body, but to secure one of his mightiest creations, a device of incredible sorcerous power and cleverness. The Red Engine.”
“The Red Engine. An imposing name, and you said it was one of his greatest creations? What was it?” I asked, making sure I sounded genuinely curious, though sounding genuinely interested was at least a fairly simple task.
“It was his life’s work. A supposedly unsolvable puzzle that contained all of his deepest secrets. A library of incredibly potent knowledge, and a vault to hold it safe at the same time.” he exclaimed, hands moving to and fro in his excitement, a smile on his face, though it faded into a scowl as he continued. “The scholars in the Academy, the Lords and Ladies of Ancient Knowledge…they claim that he never finished it, that it is incapable of functioning as it was meant to, but I know better. I know how it works, and I know how to fuel it.”
“What do you mean fuel it? And if you understand it, why not present your information, your proof, to the Academy?”
“Bah! You think I haven’t tried that? Arrogant fools, they believe that I, I who am not a Sith nor an educated man, could not possibly discover the truth that has eluded them for so many generation! They are blinded, unable to see the same truths that are so clear to me! As if my kin and I have not lived amongst these sands long before they returned from their exile and reclaimed this world from the Republic!” he groused, the words quickly becoming a furious snarl as he gesticulated somewhat spastically in his passion. Words that would probably get him killed, if the wrong person heard them, but I couldn’t say he didn’t have a point. ‘We’ had only reconquered Korriban some thirty years ago, so if he was saying that generations of his family had lived amongst and studied the tombs, they must have been here even in ‘our’ absence. “They do not see what I see: the Red Engine must be offered a great sacrifice. Not of helpless, whimpering captives with throats cut upon an altar, but the truest form of worship the Master of War would approve of: battle! Draw some beasts into the tomb! Spill their blood, let yours be spilled in turn! Let the Red Engine sup on the water of battle, drink deep the ichor of conquest, and it will reveal all it holds to you. Then, when you have taken it’s secrets for your own, bring them to me!”
I murmured something and stepped away, glad in that moment that he didn’t possess the Force, because he was clearly insane. He might know a lot of things about the tombs of Korriban, and he might be getting ignored by the Sith and the formally trained scholars unjustly, but he was also completely around the bend. Not surprising, in hindsight, as a non-Force user who lived -in every sense of the word- in tombs so permeated with the Dark Side and with Sith Force Ghosts of such might that even Sith and Imperial veterans were driven insane by their presence, but whether it was surprising or not was entirely irrelevant.
To my surprise, the body of the apprentice I expected to find just past him wasn’t there. Instead, the space her body had lain in the game was occupied only by the same damaged urns that littered so many of the tombs and ruins on-world. Interesting, though maybe that made sense. If she had been here, she wouldn’t have been anywhere near the slaves and the mining droids that had dealt her the injuries that had killed her.
That could prove problematic, given I really wanted to have a lightsaber on hand before I dealt with anything approaching a slave rebellion, but I would just have to hope for the best. At least I was used to it by this point. And at least I would be able to reach the first of Tulak Hord’s colossal tablet-monuments fairly easily as well. As I started to make may way through the ancient stone halls, I idly wondered if it would appear as large as it did in the game.
Twenty minutes later, I was able to confirm that it was even larger, and that there had to be some sort of sorcery involved in making the damn thing, given the fact that it was at least a hundred feet tall and thirty wide and I could still pick out each and every cuneiform symbol with ease. Whether it was the lighting or the tablet itself, I couldn’t tell, but there was no way that the ease with which I read the damn thing was natural. I couldn’t translate it, though, not yet. I was nowhere near proficient enough in Ancient Sith to do that on the fly, but I looked forward to doing it later. Knowledge was power, after all, especially when you were looking down the barrel of a master that deliberately wanted you as weak and untrained as she could get away with. Not that it would do her any good. Even if Khem Val didn’t intervene the way he had in the game, the likelihood of Zash being able to take over my mind with Kallig bound to me was…minimal, to say the least.
Letting me get myself killed during my trials was one thing, but letting some bitch who was killing herself with her experimentation kill my soul and take over my body? Not bloody likely! There was a reason I hadn’t talked to him about it very much, and that reason was the -in my opinion very legitimate- concern that he would simply tear her apart and call it a day. As much as it would make a good test for me, in his opinion, if I failed it, it would lead to further disgrace of our family. Dying in battle or failing a trial, fine, but letting someone steal my body and deceitfully extend our bloodline in doing so was something else entirely. Or so I thought, at any rate, and I wasn’t keen to test my hypothesis.
Shaking my head, I noted down the last few symbols and turned on my heel, heading to the next antechamber over, and thence the staircase that would lead me back into the bright, arid air…and into the midst of the slave rebellion. A slave rebellion I was going to have to cut my way through, and I couldn’t help the bitter twist my mouth took on at the irony of that fact. The once-rebellious slave, now killing those who dreamed of achieving the same freedoms that she had taken for herself. Oh, it was necessary. I didn’t have a choice if I wanted to survive, and I couldn’t change the Empire for the better and help all of the slaves if I died here, but that wasn’t particularly soothing. In fact, it felt any awful lot like making an excuse, regardless of how true it might be, and it didn’t sit well with me.
“Be careful out there, Acolyte. There are a lot of those bastards, and the mining droids are no joke. Built to take a lot of damage, they are.” a guardsman informed me as I strolled past him and set foot on the staircase, earning an appreciative hand-wave in response. It was information that wasn’t surprising to me, but it was helpful all the same, and the fact that he had made the effort was nice, and I was still faintly smiling as I ascended into the large courtyard -for want of a better word- that held my many current objectives…and my many future victims. As I drew my vibroblade, I idly wondered what was going on with my Kory, and if she was able to visit our…foreign friend.
Two redheads in one room, three if you counted Vette. I wondered how that would go?
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“…bent me over the sarcophagus and totally ruined me. I could barely walk afterwards, honestly, just stumbled along behind her until we found Spindrall.”
“So, wait, you’d just both risked getting raped to death to get the drop on a bunch of looters, in a k’lor slug infested tomb, and your immediate response was to walk for a few minutes and promptly start fucking? Using a dead sith’s sarcophagus as a literal fucking table?” the twi’lek, who Kory had learned was named Vette, asked in a passionate mingle of arousal, shock, bafflement, and awe. “Are you insane?”
“I mean, there weren’t a lot of people in the area anymore, and Ves wasn’t in the mood to wait any longer.” Kory muttered a bit sheepishly in response, tugging on her hair a bit out of habit, though she shivered lightly and couldn’t help but grin. “Which just made it better, somehow. I never thought I’d enjoy being a submissive slut all the time, not after being a slave my whole life, but I have to say, there’s something about Ves that just…”
She trailed off with something that was halfway between a sigh and a moan, leaving the still-unnamed commando and the twi’lek to exchange looks, both of them blushing, though it was admittedly far harder to see on Vette’s crimson skin.
“I still don’t get it. How can you go from being a slave, to being a Sith acolyte, to happily being a slave again.” the commando finally voiced, shaking her head in genuine, abject confusion, and Kory looked over at her with a slightly furrowed brow. Waving a hand slightly, the prisoner continued. “I mean, sure, it’s different. Khai obviously cares about you, but I don’t understand how you’re fine just…letting her do whatever she wants to you all the time, instead of trying to be your own person.”
“I am my own person. That’s why I chose to give myself to my Mistress.” Kory retorted a bit sharply, and quite primly, pouting slightly. “I know that she cares about me, that she has nearly died several times to keep me safe, put the fear of the gods into anyone who has so much as looked at me wrong. I know that she would let me go with you to the other side of the galaxy in a heartbeat if I asked her, and I know that she’ll offer even if I don’t, which is exactly why I’m not going anywhere.” she paused for a moment, oddly intent on making sure that her audience was paying proper attention to her, which they were. The surprised looks on their faces at her transformation from mousey, if perverted, meekness to passionate monologuing was almost funny. “I can’t fight beside her, I can’t run her House or perform rituals or command starships, but I can love her. I can keep her warm, hold her as she sleeps, take every ounce of pleasure and pain she offers, every piece of stress and and tension she wants to pour into me, and I’ll do it with a smile because that’s how I can be of service to her. And that makes me happy in a way that words can’t explain.”
“…well, you’re certainly passionate about her, I can say that much. And far be it for me to judge what people do in the bedroom, as long as everyone is a consenting adult.” the soldier subsided, holding her hands up slightly and adjusting her position to be a tad more comfortable. “I’ll even admit that she seems to be a decent sort, better than I would expect of any Sith, and certainly better than one whose been through what she seems to have been through. Most people would be raving lunatics bent of revenge or spreading their suffering around, but she’s just…”
“A pervert. Say, how did a girl as small as you fit that cock into her holes, anyway? Like, she was pretty soft when she stripped down in here, and she was still the biggest thing I’ve ever seen. Shouldn’t she have just…split you in half? Torn something?” Vette asked eagerly, shamelessly, apparently unaware -or uncaring- of the irony inherent to calling someone else a pervert, then talking about their cock and someone’s ability to handle it.
Kory laughed, bright and clear. "The first time? I thought she might, and gods know it was a hell of a stretch. But Mistress was... well, not gentle. Maybe not even patient. But gentle and patient enough for me to ride right on the edge of too much and just enough." Her eyes took on a dreamy quality, a purring giggle spilling from her lips. "And there's something about Sith alchemy that makes everything... more, it seems. More intense, more pleasurable, more possible. I may not be happy about everything that sadistic bastard did to her, but there are a few perks, and that’s certainly one of them."
The commando coughed awkwardly, trying to look as though she had no interest in the subject, not that either of the other two believed it for a moment. Kory didn’t even need to sense her interest and mild arousal in the Force to know that she was faking her aloofness. "Right. Moving on from your sex life—"
"Why?" Vette interjected, sounding genuinely confused. "It's the most interesting thing happening since I got locked up in here, and it’s better than just sitting around to get tortured or to see if Khai makes it back in one piece." She leaned forward conspiratorially. "So this Spindrall guy just watched you two go at it?"
"Oh, no!" Kory's eyes widened, shaking her head and gagging slightly. “Ugh, no. He’s probably sixty years old, maybe more, that would be disgusting. No, we found him a little while later, he has his own section of the tomb that he lives in.” she frowned slightly as she remembered what happened next. “He was actually really mad about it, though. Said that we’d defiled a sacred tomb, and he would have killed us if it wasn’t for the fact that we killed so many of the looters. Ves had to talk pretty fast after that, then she had to kill a half-dozen other acolytes to keep Spindrall from having me killed anyway.”
“Sure, sure, that’s all awesome and stuff, and I’m glad you’re alive, but that isn’t really important right now.” Vette quite literally waved away the feat, clearly focused on better things: sex. “So your hero save you, and then what? Victory sex?”
“You know, for someone that called Khai a pervert, you’re awfully focused on getting all the details about how she sleeps with people.” the commando drawled, pinching the bridge of her nose, and Vette scoffed and raised an eyeridge at her.
“Look, I know all you Pubs are a bunch of prudes, probably thanks to those Jedi you all follow around, but the rest of the galaxy knows how to have a little fun. Besides, unless things go really well for me, I’m going to spend the rest of my probably-short life getting gang-raped. That, or Baras will toss me to that pet psychopath that was torturing you, which would be worse, since I’m pretty sure he’d keep me around for a while instead of finishing with me quickly.” she retorted, posting her hands on her hips, legs a shoulder-width apart, uncaring of the way it displayed her faintly glistening folds. Clearly, Kory though with distinct approval and appreciation, the other slave had good taste if she was getting visibly turned on by hearing about Ves’ sexual prowess, even while locked in a cage. Ignoring the woman as she spluttered, Vette turned her eyes back to Kory. “Now, I want you to keep talking. Tell me everything about what happened next.”
“Well, we picked a dorm room, and she fucked me in the shower. Or maybe I fucked myself on her, I guess? I bent over and spread my legs, and once she was in me, she just stood there and made me do all the work. Force, it was torture, trying to make myself move, it felt so good. There was something about being the one doing all the work, just…giving her what she wanted from me, it was amazing.” she explained, expression still a bit dreamy, nibbling on her bottom lip in a way that could only be described as a combination of cute and alluring. “It got even better when she brought Malora back to our room and made her bottom for both of us. I think that’s when I finally just…embraced everything completely.”
“Oh, I have got to hear this.” Vette purred, hugging her stomach lightly, and as Kory launched into a detailed explanation of how she and her mistress had taken a cocky Apprentice in hand and turned her into a desperately mewling mess, she couldn’t help but smirk to herself in distinct satisfaction at how eagerly both members of her audience were listening.
It was a pity that they wouldn’t get the chance to experience Ves’ attentions personally, really.
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…eh, I’m sure it was fine. It wasn’t as if Kory would be able to just hang around there, anyway. ‘Cunning plan’ or not, the Inquisition and the Jailers wouldn’t let her for the sake of strategic security or some such. Besides, she was too quiet and, well, mousey, to cause any problems or even leave my room all that often without me nearby. It was cute, it was sweet, and it was arousing as hell, even if some people would insist it shouldn’t be. So what if I wanted a damsel-in-distress or two in my family, quiet and ever-submissive playthings to protect and cuddle? I would have amazonian warrior-women too, damnit! Like Nicky, or Lana! There was room in the harem for many personality types!
I emerged into the sunlight, and even before I could finish blinking from the change in luminosity, I found myself under attack.
"For freedom!" A human male charged at me, wielding what looked like a broken piece of mining equipment. His eyes were wild, desperate—the eyes of someone who had nothing left to lose. I could sympathize with that feeling, sympathize with almost everything about him, but I couldn’t let that sympathy dictate a damn thing. Not this time.
I sidestepped his clumsy attack easily and brought my vibroblade down in a swift arc. The blade hummed as it cut through flesh and bone, biting through his rough garments to sever his spine, dropping him to the ground instantly. He didn't even have time to scream, may not have even felt a thing before he died. I hoped that was the case.
A chorus of shouts drew my eyes to three more figures rushing towards me—two humans and a Twi'lek, all clutching equally makeshift weapons as the first. Their determination -if I was going to be generous enough to call it anything other than ‘desperate’- was admirable, but it was pointless, and they knew it. It was easy to tell, the despair clinging to them like a noxious cloud, and I found it as disgusting as most other Sith would have found it intoxicating.
"We won't go back!" the Twi'lek shouted, her lekku twitching with agitation, her arms trembling as she held up her weapon.
I didn't answer. Words wouldn't help here. Instead, I channeled the Force into my legs and leapt, clearing their heads and landing behind them. Before they could turn, I'd already slashed my vibroblade across the necks of the two humans, neatly severing the head of one and almost doing the same with the second, not that he survived it regardless. The Twi'lek managed to spin around, but her eyes widened as I extended my hand, lifting her off the ground with the Force.
"I'm sorry." was all I said, before clenching my hand into a fist and breaking her neck, the sickening crack echoing off the stones. She hung there for a moment, limp and lifeless, before I slowly -respectfully, even- lowered her to lie beside her friends. Not that it meant anything to her, anymore, to have her body treated with the thinnest of respects, but it meant something to me.
I set off again, darting across the sands with preternatural speed, only for a glow outside the corner of my eye to bring me skidding to a dusty stop. There, right where he had stood in the game, was the Slave Rebellion Leader, and much like in the game he had a pair of guards with him, two hulking male humans carrying vibroblades and blaster carbines. None of that, necessarily, had caught my eye though. No, what had caught my eye was the fact that he was holding -and waving around, which was a damn dangerous thing to do- the missing, dead apprentice’s lightsaber. On the one hand, at least I knew where it was. On the other, it wasn’t lying in some shadowed corner of the tomb, but was instead in the hands of a very large, very dangerous man.
That being said, Force Lightning would cure what ailed me.
I approached cautiously, keeping my vibroblade ready. The leader noticed me immediately, to his credit, his eyes narrowing with recognition as he took me in. He must have seen other acolytes before—probably killed them too, judging by the confidence with which he brandished the lightsaber. Better than I would have expected for someone without proper training, but perhaps he had -in his past life, whatever he had been before becoming a slave- possessed some experience with blades. It wouldn’t be quite the same, of course, but it could easily be enough.
"Another of the Sith's dogs, eh?" he spat, the crimson blade of the lightsaber humming menacingly in his grip. "Come to put us back in chains, bitch?"
His two guards moved to flank him, raising their carbines. I could feel the Force stirring around me, responding to the danger and my own rising tension. This wasn't going to be like the other slaves—this man had a weapon that could actually hurt me, and he looked like he at least somewhat knew how to use it. And charging him would be difficult, thanks to the two blaster rifles his guards had pointed at me.
“No, I’m not. I’m here to take that lightsaber back. Whether you live or die is up to you. I’m perfectly happy to take the saber and carrying on with my trials before fucking off back to the Academy. No skin off my nose if our and yours want to hunker down out here and thumb your nose at the higher-ups.” I responded calmly, hoping against hope that he would, for some reason, decide that he really did want to just give me the lightsaber and let me go about my business without a hassle. The things he instead said to me, and told me to do, were completely impossible -even with the power of the Force-, but were impressive in their creativity. “I see. That would be a no then.”
Rather than launching a direct, overt attacking on the three of them with the Force, they way they probably expected, I decided that ‘if you’re not cheating, you’re not trying’ was the order of the day. Laying a metaphysical grip over one of the two riflemen, I yanked the barrel of his weapon around and forced his finger to pull the trigger. Bolts of excited plasma flickered across the space that separated them, drilling into the second man’s body, sending him reeling from the fresh, smoking wounds.
Before the first guard could even register what had happened, what I had made him do, I used my grip on him to throw him backwards, slamming head headfirst with skull-shattering speed into the stone plinth the leader was standing on. His soul winked out of existence as his head was turned into a bloody smear, his corpse slumping to the ground as the leader leapt down with a bellow of fury.
"You Sith are all the same!" The leader roared as he charged at me, swinging the lightsaber in wild, powerful arcs. "Treacherous snakes and cowards!"
I retreated, smoothly giving ground as I evaluated him, keeping my mouth shut and my attention focused on the buzzing crimson blade. He was stronger than me physically, but untrained with the weapon. Each swing left him open, vulnerable, but not quite vulnerable enough for me to counter-attack just yet. Not until I had a better idea of his abilities. I could feel the Force coiling around us, the eyes of the Dark Side watching with palpable attention, a hunger that I was sure even my Force-blind enemy could sense, and I grimaced faintly as I imagined that it was getting it's hooks just a little bit deeper into me.
I feinted to the right, drawing him into overextending, and as his lightsaber carved a glowing path through empty air, I seized my moment. Lightning erupted from my fingertips, crackling through the space between us, but to my surprise, he managed to bring the saber back around and up just in time. The red blade caught the lightning, absorbing much of it as he gritted his teeth against the force pushing him backward and the static corona of my attack that lashed at his arms.
"Not my first time fighting your kind, whore." he snarled, sweat beading on his brow, his eyes wild but intensely focused. "Killed three acolytes before you. Your fancy tricks won't work so easily on me!"
So he did have experience. That complicated matters, to a certain degree. Unfortunately for him, I had other ideas, and they included things that he probably hadn’t used on him. I inhaled, low and long and deep, gathering the Force in my lungs and vocal chords, and then I screamed like a banshee right in his face. And just as it had when I had first used this ability in my desperation to survive Spindrall’s lair, the effects were devastating. He stumbled back, blood dripping from his eyes and nose and ears, and I took a moment to be impressed by the fact that he had managed to keep hold of his plundered lightsaber -even managing to keep it somewhat-raised and pointed in my general direction- before I planted my vibrosword hilt deep in his chest. He collapsed, dropping the saber at last, it’s blade flickering out as it thumped to the sand, his hands going to my sword hilt. He writhed there for a short eternity, trying to removed the thing that was killing him with rapidly-weakening limbs, before finally falling still. I stared at him for a moment, silently contemplating everything and nothing at the same time, before turning away with a flicker of thought that had the slender silver cylinder leaping into my hand. Clipping ‘my’ new weapon to my waist, I started towards the great stone threshold before me. The threshold that would lead me towards the second tablet, and to the Red Engine.
