Nothing is Sacred

[Kaldar]

It was strange to Kaldar that this place had become his home, but it had. In the entire galaxy, it was perhaps the only place that he had felt safe. Raze's absence hadn't robbed all of the nice, passive benefits, but it no longer felt as secure as it once had.

His return here hadn't just been for the pleasure, though. Sure, he'd availed himself of some of the more indulgent aspects of the fortress, but he couldn't allow himself to be distracted from the real reason he had come here.

With Raze gone - temporarily or permanently - it was going to fall to Kaldar to make sure that their territory wasn't immediately gobbled up. That it was protected against the coming storms. Sure, he had the Nagai and even more recently he had the investments and money on Muunilinst, but there was another power of the Dark Side that Raze had mastered: abominations.

Vicious, uncompromising, and not requiring "rationalization" for mayhem and slaughter. It was perfect.

 

[Kaldar]

The logical place to begin wasn't with the archives or even the artifacts, it had been with the Forgemasters themselves. The servants that Raze had empowered to make and control abominations for him were the logical place to start. While they, of course, couldn't make Exalted, that wasn't what Kaldar needed.

Unfortunately, a discussion with the Forgemasters was a mixed bag. On the one hand, most of them required items to create abominations. Artifacts forged by Raze that could be used to channel the Dark Side of the Force particularly at Nexuses in order to create more abominations.

On the up side, the man could tell him what it felt like. He could describe the sensation, and that put Kaldar on the path he needed to look at. He meditated on the feeling for some time before diving into the archives and labs. The labs were a horrendous place, as it turned out, with more than a few failed experiments and monstrosities, but they yielded more trails for him to follow.

 

[Kaldar]

It had been nearly two weeks now that Kaldar had been pawing through the library, the labs, and the records from his conversation with the Forgemaster. To simply take the artifact from the Forgemaster would have been the easy answer, but if raze came back that could pose a problem, and beyond that it didn't solve Kaldar's problem: he wanted to be able to create them for himself.

So he kept digging, reading, reviewing, and eventually, it clicked. A process he'd never have come up with on his own, he took the opportunity to take several of the dungeon's captives for trialing.

He pulled the Force to himself and drew on all the darkness within this place. His lust for power, his knowledge, his fear. He let them draw shape and form and began to twist. He let them warp the mind and body of his victim. Let their screams echo through the chamber. He felt their blood begin to boil and his limbs snap under the strain of transformation. He hearkened back to the sensations he had felt both times he stood at the doorway to the Abyss. He recalled the power and how the Force had bent to him. It was like trying to recall a half-remembered dream, but there was just a hint and whiff of it that was still there.

He manipulated, yanked, and twisted... and then his victim died. A mangled mess of flesh and bone on the ground, the failure burned within him. He raged and hated, stoking that feeling to a peak.

And then he brought in his next victim.

 

[Kaldar]

He didn't know how many hours it was that he spent bringing in those who would have been turned to abominations by Raze but were now the unlucky victims of Kaldar's experiment.

People were turned to bundles of goo, messes of bone, and twisted, broken husks of their former selves. All he knew was that when exhaustion threatened to take hold, and rage from his repeated failures, he let that rage break free. It sprung up within him and he drew on that stain that his master had placed on his soul, and he let it pour into this being. This poor, unfortunate soul.

Twisted and warped until her body was beyond being recognizable. The beast that rose was something else very different. It was... well it wasn't pretty, but it was alive, it was corrupted, and it was obedient.

KRIFF. YES. he shouted to no one in particular in this place. It was only him and his monster, but it was his monster. He had created it, it served him... it was power.

And it was intoxicating beyond belief.