All Men Stumble, All Men Fall.

[Denzein]

They were uneasy.

Jedi seldom spoke of the former Grandmaster Lecchamemnon, but when they did it was with hushed whispers - murmurs on the breeze. No one truly knew the circumstance of his sudden disappearance, nor did they really know anything about him. Since his arrival on the steps of the great temple of Tython the best part of a century ago Lecchamemnon had been known as something of a peculiarity within the ranks. In his early days he barely spoke at all save to his hard line, authoritarian Master, and even later when he ascended to the Jedi Council as Loremaster there was no one to call him friend, or comrade. He had been left to his own devices, overlooked by people that would have done well to watch him closely.

At first even the Council assumed him harmless, a quiet scholar set in his reclusive ways. He tended the archives and made them his own, preferring their solitude to the company of his fellow Jedi. Ever so slowly though, the rumours spread: Lecchamemnon consulted Sith holocrons, Lecchamemnon practiced dark arts in his quarters, Lecchamemnon had hunted down a rogue and brought back his corpse. Every Jedi knew a different story, but none knew to what extent they were true. He was as much a mystery as when he’d joined.

Eventually of course, he even rose to lead the Jedi - though he’d quickly proven himself ill suited to the task. The Order began to see less and less of their Grandmaster, shutting himself away in his private archive for days on end, even keeping his council in the dark about just what it was he did with his time. There were some that questioned his actions openly, but not many... And they never once received an answer. Rumours were all there ever was.

When he vanished, imposing exile upon himself in the dead of night, the rumours changed in nature. Where once they had accused him of evils, now they fantasized about his sins catching up with him. He had died, he had imploded in some vile experiment, he had taken up with the Sith, the Chiss, the Mandalorians even. His ship was taken along with supplies and a sizeable chunk of archive, and nothing more was seen or heard of him.

Until Coruscant there had only been stories. Now there was the man himself.

He had blazed through the atmosphere as the Sith began their landing, almost unmistakable from their own drop ships save for the fighters chasing on his tail and the universal frequency broadcast he was aiming at the Jedi Temple. “When you fall back, make for the hangars. I will be waiting for you.” So cold, so aloof - but many Jedi took him up on the offer nonetheless. His ship was one of many that carried fleeing Jedi from the world, though it did not take its master with them.

He had intended to make good his escape with those he had saved, thus earning redemption for his exile, trading his previous wrongdoings for the lives of younglings. Halfway through through the atmosphere however, he had been granted some new possibility. Giving the padawans and knights his ship and leaving them to their fate he’d struck out alone back down into hell - abandoning his one reliable chance to get away from Coruscant before the Sith’s inevitable victory made escape all but impossible. The decision had been a heavy one, but he made it gladly. The force took away his freedom, but it had given him something so much more important.

The plan was a group effort, and it was as brilliant as it was devious. A team of Jedi that were cut off and with no hope of evacuation had joined forces with one Roxton Dagger, whom Lecchamemnon knew to be the former Mandalore before Vencu had turned them into glorified lapdogs of the Sith. Lecchamemnon had coordinated with them, helping them shape their scheme and resolving to meet them at the specified location... But not one of the warriors he spoke to seemed pleased that he was coming. He was not surprised, and frankly didn’t care for their opinion of him any more. He knew that Jedi likely despised and distrusted him for his perceived betrayal, but like it or not they needed him now more than ever. The entire galaxy needed him, for all the other heroes were dead, or dying, or fleeing aboard a grand starship. The knowledge pleased him, in a nasty kind of way. He felt vindicated.

They were to send a message to the Sith and their dogs, one that would not easily be ignored. Lecchamemnon relished in the audacity of it, he could feel the dark side within him smouldering quietly, the statement to come fuelling his destructive impulse. He held it in check, though not without some effort. Restraint was something he was still getting used to, and often the beast raged against its shackles. It would learn in time who its master was, or so he hoped... He had no wish to become what he’d tasted back on Onderon.

And yet here he was with a team of like minded assassins, waiting for their prey to enter the web. This was no action of the Light, but it was necessary... The sort of thing Lecchamemnon had always tasked himself with, the sort of thing that had damned him. This time at least he knew the risks, he knew what to expect of himself and what to guard against. This time might not be like the others.

The scene they had chosen was not far from the main theatre: It was below the surface of Coruscant, under the metal skin where dropships could not reach and reinforcements were hard to contact, let alone actually find. For the past half hour or so Dagger had been transmitting garbled shouts for aid using looted Mandalorian communicators (that Lecchamemnon had only been too happy to provide...), fishing for the father of all bites. He was in command of the fight above, the man whose rule they were here to end. Dagger was playing on his honour, on his obsession with the lives of his men: It was a fatal flaw that deserved to be exploited. The former Mandalore lay among the corpses the communicators had been taken from, twitching as if just barely clinging to life. It was convincing, made moreso by the bodies and the blood.

The Jedi Lecchamemnon now commanded lay in wait. This was an industrial zone with many machines, large pipes and vents, it was an easy place to hide in. They numbered little over a dozen, but they were everyone that had come. Most were knights, though there were two padawans and another master besides him... They would have to do. Dagger, certainly, would be of great help - Mandalorians knew Mandalorians after all, he would know where to strike hardest.

Waiting for the trap to close, Lecchamemnon had nothing to do but be silent. He was good at it, for silence was all he had given the Jedi for years.

He was about to commit cold murder, and he was good at that too.

 

[Phil]

Roxton Dagger and Mandalore the Indomitable, two different people who shared the same body, one mind that was to serve the Mandalorians into a greater service. That all came crashing down with the arrival of one man and the army he created, followed by betrayal of some in his own ranks. He came there, and everything that Roxton had put forth to ensure his plans would succeed collapsed around them. The Sith delivered a striking blow to his plans, enough for him to forfeit his position. Civil War among them broke out, so many died for what they thought was honor, and betraying the very people who helped the Mandalorians after the Sith ousted them from their world for the very ones who did it.

With the deaths of so many he called friends in the Mandalorians, Roxton has finally come to the realization of the Mandalorians he was once with: most would rather die fighting anyone for their own image of honor then becoming something greater then just a armored killer. He tried to shape the Mandalorians into something greater, something that the Galaxy would respect then fear, something away from their dark selves from the past. The proud warrior culture that once valued courage, strength, and honor, values embodied by past Mandalores in the past, had now been reduced to glorifying pointless violence for perverted ideas they called honor.

He laid there, torn, burnt rags that soaked blood with what was once padding on them but now were so damaged they may as well of been scrap strapped to his once green combat suit. The helmet of one of the people he once commanded rested on his head, covered in blood and burn marks, battered and in need of mending. He waited there, hand gripping the communicator tightly as if still working up the strength to use it, but was too close to death.