Xavier 36/70 51.5/100
Con 22/60 36/100
Dak 20/60 33.5/100
Gallador 19/60 32/100
Galder: 18/70 26/100
Azarl 15/60 25/100
Rianna 11/50 22/100
Rand 7/40 17.5/100
Relle 6/50 12/100
Tanic 0/60 0/100
Med:
Azarl: 7
Rand 6
Rianna 5
Tanic 5
Con: 5
Galder: 5
Dak: 5
Xavier 4
So, my plan is.
Azarl heals Xavier
Rand heals Con
Rianna heals Dak
Tanic heals Gallador
Con heals Galder
Galder heals Azarl
Dak heals Rianna
Xavier heals Rand
Originally posted by Ushgarak
Not wanting to metagame here, but you will find the droids act much more intelligently than you might think,. whilst the General is alive.Barricades may have their place but a waiting game favours the droids.
Curse you for wrecking my ideas.
So, the general needs to die.
The crystal is ready to play.
----
The audio feed comes first.
Incomprehensible
The problem is, you cannot understand a damn word of it. This language is nothing any of you have ever heard.
It comes in staccato bursts. The data corruption means that only partial recovery of the feed is possible; you are getting small excerpts from a long set of records.
Then an image flickering, of that four-tentacled being again, staring into the camera. Then a little bit of movement. It all seems to be of him.
In fact, it seems to be a log, reports made by him, or maybe a diary, or some such thing. He speaks into the camera in the small excerpts you have.
“Kawaahlatoo! Hulla! Han twla fo bek!” It’s all nonsense to you, but you can still tell the tone- aggressive, proud.
On the next shot, as he continues to babble incomprehensibly into the camera, you can make out more of the background. He is in a room, with lots of lights and controls around- a spaceship? A fixed ground command centre? Something like that. It is rather dark but very sturdy looking. He gestures continuously into the camera, as if making very decisive points that he is very sure about.
Another except, more talking decisively into the camera. And it is in this shot that you notice the lightsabre at his waist. And another. And another. And… another.
In another one of these excepts, he holds up one of the sabres in his tendrils and ignites it, making a declaration as he does so.
In the next, with him still talking words none of you can understand, he is making another point with a tendril. This one, at least, you can all understand- he is holding a severed head, and smiling widely. He waves it around with more decisive actions.
More of these talks to camera, and more, and more… none of them make sense.
Then the last entry. Something is different- very different. He is talking urgently- perhaps a note of fear? The dim lights are flickering in and out, and the screen keeps shaking, causing dust to rain down.
Then the vast door behind him starts to be cut through- a ring of molten metal is forming, siding around the door slowly until it is cut clean through… by a red lightsabre.
The door falls in, and stepping inside are three figures wearing dark cowls- the traditional garb, of course, of the Sith.
The alien being calls all four lightsabres to his hands, looking desperate. And just before he turns to fight, he yells one last thing into the camera.
“SYPHAR N KALAH! SYPHAR N KALAH!!”
Disruption to the image. You cannot see what happens. You hear sabres clashing.
Then a red sabre is cutting the alien in two, and a dark figures strides forward and de-activates the feed.
------
All of you at this point feel a strong burst of emotion form within the group but you cannot tell from where.
Except you can sense something from Galder. That seems to have surprised him.
AVALAR
Five years ago
"They used to let the young students die here, Galder. They’d starve to death if they couldn’t open the doors. No-one would help them.”
Galder looked at the blank black door in front of him- heavy, thick. A super-dense material that even lightsabres would have trouble cutting through- though to judge by the state of the external defences, the patient sabre won out in the end.
The door had no visible controls, sensors, interface or any means of opening it at all. Galder reached out again with the Force, tried to find the point, and pushed… nothing.
“No. Any toddler can push a rock over, Galder. The switch inside the wall needs fine control. You must squeeze the two contacts together. Only then will the door open. Here the initiates learned to use the doors or they died. That was step one.”
Galder felt his anger rise at this waste of time. The initiates were not expert sabre wielders. Galder would not starve. He’d hack his way through every door in the complex if he needed to. In fact all this did was…
click
The door slid smoothly upwards. Slightly confused as to what to do with the upspring of anger, now useless, Galder stepped through the corridor into the complex beyond. Doors all around; one led to a databank, which apparently was mostly useless save for the star charts that could be extracted from it. Yet that is where Kuylen was. The entire back half of the room was covered in ice, the removal of which was a delicate job not suitable for the mining laser. Galder had through Kuylen was sabreing it away by hand. Instead, Kuylen seemed to be extracting information from it, his pelisse hanging over a chair.
“Why did you make me do that?” complained Galder, irritably.
“Mind your tongue,” said Kuylen. “You feel the need to criticise me? I lead. You can fight me for it if you want.”
“I was asking why you made me sit in that room, NOT asking to fight you!” said Galder, his anger no subsiding.
“To criticise me is to do the same thing.
“I was asking a question.”
“Then ask it with respect!” snapped Kuylen.
“Fine! Why did you lead me to that room, oh great Master?”
“Mockery ill-becomes you, Galder. I sent you there because you needed testing.”
“I’ve BEEN tested!”
“You’ve been trained. It’s not the same thing.”
“Not just Dordellus! I’ve been TESTES! Here! Isn’t that what the Mirror is for?”
Kuylen snorted. “No-one is doubting your emotional commitment, Galder. You are consumed by anger. It takes more than that.”
“More than that to what?”
Kuylen stood and sighed. “I have to go,” he said. “I need to make sure Faylar stays on course for the final stages. Chion and Krisha are on a mission; Saar is still subduing the assassin’s world.”
“And me?”
“SOMEONE needs to look after the platform whilst I am gone.”
“You’re giving me a mission?”
“Yes. You guard the platform. That is all. You don’t mess around with the controls, you don’t fire the laser for fun, and you don’t massacre the crew until the final layers are excavated. You could not have opened that door if your anger removes your focus. It seems there is some hope for you, anyway.”
“But that’s all? You are sticking me on my own spinning around this icy nowhere?”
“Yes. And if you manage that without screwing up… then we’ll see what else you can do.”
“But I want to fight!”
“There’ll be fighting enough when this is done.”
“Grunts from Damagran don’t interest me. Send me to kill the one you want dead!”
“No.”
“Send me! I am better than Krisha!”
“Her talents are needed. In any…”
“SEND ME! I’m ready!”
“No! The Jedi will move to protect him once it becomes clear he opposes the Faylar’s separatists. “
“The Jedi? You won’t send me because of the Jedi? You won’t let me prove my worth!”
“No, I think you will be so obsessed with taking on the Jedi that you’ll forget your mission. Say what you like about Chion- he’ll do the job I send him for, and not get distracted on anything else.”
Galder, with perhaps surprising wisdom, stayed quiet.
“You stay here. If the others fail us, you’ll get your wish- because the Jedi will come here. Until then- sit tight, and prove your worth. If I return and find anything amiss, it will be on your head. It will be your head I take for it.”
Kuylen stood and slipped on his pelisse. A sullen Galder, contemplating time stuck on this station alone, forbidden to kill, ran his eyes over the computer databank, spying Kuylen's recent queires.
“What does ‘Syphar n Kalah’ mean?” Kuylen paused in mid-stride.
“Just an old story. A very old story.”
“You and your stories…”
“History is important, Galder. Very, very important.”
“So you keep telling me. Your story about the Fifth Punitive War still makes no sense to me.”
“You’ll understand one day. If you live that long.” Galder snorted himself.
“Did you find your story?”
“Not in there.”
“In the Archive then? When we reach it?”
“Perhaps. If we are very, very lucky.”
“I thought you said ALL the secrets of the Sith were in there?”
Kuylen was silent for a few more moments, as if weighing up whether to speak.
“All the secrets the Monks here still knew.”
“There are secrets about the Sith that they had forgotten themselves?” asked Galder, confused.
“You’ve much still to learn, Galder,” said Kuylen, striding out. “Take the other shuttle back to the platform. Try not to crash it.”
Rand views the contents of the crystal with amusement and wonder, but also frustration that he is unable to understand anything that the four-limbed alien is saying. He is also confused that this being was killed by the Sith.
"Strange," Rand comments. "We may not understand its value now, but I am sure you understand, Galder, the importance of keeping a copy of this information for ourselves..."
"Yes, of course..." Galder says. "'Syphar n Kalah' is important... an old story of the Sith, Kuylen told me... I did not understand then the value of such things then, but now... I understand Kuylen better. These old myths and legends? He thrived off of these. The Mausoleum of Demnos was deemed a myth, but he found it. There was nothing there, but he found it just the same. That dedication... that iron will..."
Galder plays back the contents of the crystal, staring hard into the face of the tentacled being that is gesturing at the recording device.
"One thing I'm sure of. We need to find out what 'Syphar n Kalah' means. And then... we seek what Kuylen sought. The path to becoming Sith."