Coruscant Sacked: Aftermath
Epilogue
Even now, months after it all went down, it feels strange. I have still not gotten used to it all. For my master, there is no denying that the events on the world of Feena in the Gordian Reach had considerable success. But there were also failures. Some could have been avoided, others not.
As is well-known, my master took part in the Sacking of Coruscant. Her military forces and a number of her other apprentices and subject Lords were part of the Strike team backing up Darth Malgus in the destruction of the Jedi Temple on Coruscant and the purging of the planet’s Jedi infestation. Her secondary mission, approved by the Dark Council, was to capture Jedi for use in certain experiments of hers.
The mission went entirely as expected, with the glorious destruction of the Jedi Temple and many dead Jedi. Ten Jedi were captured and transported to Feena for the experiments. When offered the opportunity by my master, I was interred there with them, to deal with any unforeseen circumstances as they appeared.
Now that the events are all in the past, I can confirm that none of them made their way back to the republic, even with the unexpected interference in my master’s plans that came later. They all either saw that our cause was the right one, died in the experiments or died trying to escape.
Even while I stayed among the prisoners, my master helped me maintain my cover by the simple expedience of including me in her experiments. Considering the outcome of them, I bear her no ill will for it, though it was both exceedingly painful and confusing as it went on. I came out of it all stronger, a better Sith. At the stage they were on then, all they did was leave me in pain, nauseous, sick and riddled with red rashes.
The first prisoner to die was the diminutive creature that went by the name of Talon Soule. Apparently a thief taken in by the Jedi Order and trained as a padawan, she tried to steal the late Lord Sish’s lightsaber, something to which he did not react well. He punished her harshly, and she died some time later from complications with her injuries. Unfortunately for Lord Jewel Namore, her fur proved too damaged to be of use.
My investigations revealed that she knew another prisoner from before her time among the Jedi, the human girl, Nazca Barsavi. This one was chosen by my master to undergo experiments not unlike my own, but not identical. She was quickly convinced to utilize the Dark Side of the Force. She would eventually undergo a complete transformation, much to my master’s satisfaction.
A week and a half after I got to Feena, Some time after I had left the prison compound to consult my master I encountered the first hint that there was more happening on Feena than I, my master or any other Sith knew. The aforementioned unforeseen interference. I encountered a Jedi Master. Thankfully, he could not sense where my true loyalties lay, so he had no warning as I led him right into the hands of Lord Vivithe Lansha.
I led him almost directly to her, only going by a sufficiently roundabout fashion to avoid arousing suspicion, then let her deal with him properly, getting involved only after confirming that no one else were able to observe, and I saw she had need of assistance. It was unfortunate to be forced to break my cover with anyone, but unavoidable. She was, fortunately, the kind of Sith that saw the value in keeping secrets and agreed not to reveal anything to any of the others.
I have recently been able to see the recordings of how she, Lord Sish and Nimm Deenia interrogated him, and can only be impressed. They broke him down, both literally and figuratively. For days, he refused to give up anything and anyone, but he was only human, so he broke in the end.
His capture ensured that the Jedi who had somehow managed to sneak onto my master’s planet no longer had the advantage of surprise. From what my master has told me since, it was determined that they needed to be wiped out sooner rather than later. The majority of the Sith present on Feena and a large contingent of soldiers moved out to wipe them out, with only Apprentices Zanna and Daven staying behind, assisted by the somewhat sickened but turned Nazca Barsavi.
I myself had no choice but to remain to maintain my cover. I also had to remain to ensure that no escape attempts would be successful. With my master’s dreadnaught in orbit, the invaders had no chance of escape, even if they had taken to the air, something they did not. Had the Jedi invaders struck hard and fast, I do not think we would have been nearly as successful against them. In fact, with surprise on their hands, they might even have succeeded at doing irreparable damage to the facility or even the residents. Fortunately, that was not the case.
With limited Sith resources to call on, I had to improvise somewhat when several of the prisoners sought to use the absence of most Sith to escape. None of them would’ve noticed if not for a little droid I later learned was called Navi. It seemed Navi had been able to infiltrate and found a small shuttle available for escape. I thought it was safe on account of the extensive anti-ship defenses on the compound. Little did I know at the time that one of the prisoners, the one known as Xid Terrik, was a Jedi practitioner of
Mechu Deru, and therefore was an expert at working on computer systems. While Navi lead the others safely to the shuttle, I joined Xid in the attempt to disable the compound’s aerial defenses, not having any idea he would succeed. As it was, I only barely managed to trigger a silent alarm to get troopers up to the command center before splitting off from him in the flight.
Though the shuttle was guarded by Apprentice Daven Auter, two of the other prisoners, Jedi Knight Denso Halsa and his padawan learner Khan Sainen managed to slay him and to get onto the shuttle. The rest of the would-be escapees either had not dared to escape, were cut off by Apprentice Zanna and a contingent of troopers, or were recovering from injuries gained in trying to resist the efforts of the Sith. Thankfully I managed to assist the technicians in restoring the defenses in time to shoot down the ship before it got out of range. Both of the two prisoners died in the crash, unfortunately. For a long time after this, I saw nothing more of the droid Navi, so at the time I presumed it destroyed.
The third attempted escapee, a Twi’lek Padawan named Shir’Inilim, was fortunately captured alive. My master chose her for the experiments soon after her return, where she proved to be far weaker than expected. She did not even succeed at becoming a proper Sithspawn, let alone a Sith, dying a twisted and mutated wreck, little better than an animal. I had early on determined her to be both weak with the Force and rather weak-minded, so I was not overly surprised.
Many things happened in the jungle excursion, chief of which was the termination of the combined Jedi and Republic invasion. However, battlefields are confusing, and as I was not there, I only have a second-hand account of events for this report. The interrogation revealed that there were a significant number of republic special forces troops present, as well as a second Jedi master and another Jedi knight among the invaders. It had also revealed that the Jedi master was a Tiss’shar battlemaster by the name of Fa-Val-Kuul.
What none knew, and which has only been uncovered later through intense investigation, was that the the captain of the republic troopers was a relative of Lord Sish’s apprentice, Jayda Mirthios. When Lord Sish set himself up against the captain, she did not join her master. She in fact betrayed us all, turning on her master, killing him just before he laid the finishing blow. She then proceeded to steal away her cousin’s body, fleeing somewhere neither of them could be located. It can only be assumed that neither returned to their superiors, for no evidence of that has been uncovered by our spies in the republic.
In the battle against the Jedi master, the Jedi knight and the remaining republic troops, Lord Jewel Namore met an early death at the hands of the Jedi master. However, her death was not a total loss, for it permitted My master and Apprentice Nimm Deenia to get into position to give him a proper challenge. I heard it lasted a long time, intermixed only with the deaths of the majority of the Republic troops and the pacification of Jedi Knight Astera Nalin. With the exception of the captured knight and the unknown fate of the Republic Special Forces captain, there were no enemy survivors.
It must have been hard fought, for I have never seen Darth Nyiss as exhausted as she was when she returned that day. It is a small miracle that none of her subordinates chose to betray her at that moment, and take advantage of her weakness. Fortunately, no one did, for I would not have reached my true potential had anyone succeeded.
My master continued her experiments on me and on several of the prisoners, leaving me physically weaker than ever, but from my master’s look of satisfaction, the experiments upon me were clearly having the desired effect. Other than the physical weakness and pain, the effects I noted were a distinct reddening of my skin, combined with unusual ease of drawing on the Dark Side of the Force.
The prisoner taken in the jungle was immediately put into the experiments, following a similar recipe as my own, except being adjusted to account for her species. Unfortunately, she refused to embrace the Dark Side, which eventually resulted in the experiments mutating her into a Sithspawn.
Considering the attempt at escaping while the Sith were largely absent, the degree to which they were guarded was increased significantly. This meant I had far less ease of movement while maintaining my cover. I do know that the strangest prisoner of them all, the contradiction that was a Sith Pureblood Jedi padawan, Ryndarra Kirileth, was convinced to embrace the Dark Side. Blood proved stronger than training for her, just as truly as it had for the Late Lord Sish’s missing apprentice, Jayda Mirthios.
The only prisoner not put into the experiments at this point was Jedi Knight Xid Terrik. This was because my master had theories he would die if he got too far into the experiment without embracing the Dark Side. Or at least that was my theory at the time. It certainly had proven so in the case of Jedi Knight Astera Nilim.
My own transformation was advancing quickly after the first month of captivity for the prisoners. It still left me physically weak and off balance, but not as much as it had at the start. It had made me grow taller, apparently in response to them heightened traits inherited from a non-human ancestor of mine. My skin was pure crimson at this point, and my eyes had taken on a distinct red-orange hue.
With the reduced prisoner count, we could put more effort into actually turning the ones who remained. Right after the Sacking of Coruscant there had not really been a plan in place for each prisoner. It was mostly done randomly, with a method of trial and failure. Now, the regimen changed. Now we could tailor a plan for each prisoner. For me, the focus fell on Xid Terrik. I did not care much about Nimm Deenia’s pet, Chell. She was more about hurting the Jedi than trying to make something useful out of it.
Anyways. Xid Terrik. I found him fascinating. Even with the deaths of all those others, he kept his hopes up. He kept thinking that he would escape. Or as he thought of it, that
we would escape. The fact that both I and Padawan Cerria Kinall were at times barely able to stumble about, let alone fight, seemed not to get in the way of his hopes and dreams. Whether Nimm’s pet was about was random chance most days, she was little more than an animal by this point in any case, broken in completely. It certainly did not stop her attempts at escape, fortunately Apprentice Zanna kept good track of her, so I did not have to interfere much.
The hardest bit about it all was how he did not trust my master. He refused to accept that she bore him no ill will. After seeing how poorly he interacted with my master, I privately suggested that I should take over the work of turning him. That with her guidance, I could work on making him see the right way of things. It took some convincing, but my master relented. A delay would be better than simply losing him.
Shortly afterwards, it was made a point of splitting me and him away from the other two. Shortly after, we were informed that they had both been terminated due to being useless to the empire. I knew they had been close to falling already at that point, so to Xid they were effectively dead. In between my bouts of genetically induced sickness, I tried everything to turn him. I did not have much success with misdirection, for he was far too good at analyzing information.
When I instead simply spent my time trying to learn who he was, what made him tick, I eventually came to a revelation of why he so resisted my master. He was afraid. Afraid of becoming a monster like Lord Sish had been or like so many other Sith had built their reputations on being like. Once I figured that out, we got a much better idea of how to go about turning him. We—or rather, I—would have to make sure his focus wasn’t on doing stuff, on making things for the empire. Especially not anything remotely resembling weaponry.
In the process of learning everything about Xid, I managed to obtain the remains of Navi, learning from the trooper that ended its life where they were. My master’s suggestion was both effective and scary all at once. She knew how I had looked at him, and she knew I found him intriguing. Therefore, she suggested I seduce him, make him fall in love with me. Or at least be infatuated with me. In hindsight, I see she wanted me to prove myself to her yet again, prove my commitment to the empire. At the time, I did not even see that. All I saw was the terrifying challenge of it all. But I could not refuse, for I did on some level care for him. I did not want him to become merely a fount of information to be bled dry. I wanted to convince someone with the same logic as had convinced me to join the Empire. If that meant I had to use seduction to lay the groundwork, then so be it.
I won’t describe anything here about how I went about it or how it was for me. If you want such tales, you should look in other places. Suffice to say, I am female, he is male of a similar age and the same lack of experience. With my master’s guidance, I managed to succeed and I cannot deny that the return of his droid’s remains certainly helped. Over the following weeks, as my transformation neared the end, the sickness faded and my confidence grew stronger. I managed to guide him into the same sort of evidence that had convinced me, slowly guiding him onto the path to the Dark Side. Not out of cruelty or maliciousness, but out of necessity. As I had promised him, he did not become a monster. He got to see that there were at least as many monsters in the republic and among the Jedi. The only difference really was that the monstrous Sith were honest about it.
He is still moving down the path, absorbing the knowledge I feed him, largely oblivious to how he is walking up the path to the Dark Side. I served both my master and the empire in this, but most of all, I served myself. One day, I hope to convince him that he is ready to undergo the experiment that was so successful on me. I suspect my master wants to test it further first, but the so-called peace treaty has made getting Jedi prisoners harder, so she does not have much in the way of opportunity for this. I certainly do not want to risk losing him, his skills or his knowledge to the experiments, but I think they should be safe enough. However, I want him to desire it too. For now, there are only three successes from my master’s experiments: Me, Nazca Barsavi and Cerria Kinall.
I was, naturally, the first success. I finished my transformation before the others were even halfway through it. When their skin truly started taking on the proper color, my cheek tendrils and eyebrow-stalks were all grown in, and the bone spurs were making themselves known. That last bit was not comfortable to grow, that much I can say. However, once grown in, they were easy to get used to. They were all symbols to be proud of, for they said to all that I am a pure-blooded Sith. At long last, my chains had been broken. I, Lea Rahn, apprentice to Darth Nyiss, was free.
It was only when I had fully recovered from my transformation that my master told me the true name of the process I had undergone:
Sithification.
