The Battle of Coruscant -- A Monument to Their Sins

[Rom]

A Monument to Their Sins​

Monument Plaza. It's grounds surrounded the peaks of Umate; the only earth on Coruscant that could be touched by sentient hands. It was once the main attraction for tourists coming to the Capital, but since the terraforming done by the Vong and the massive reconstruction effort that followed, it had become a pale shade of it's former glory, covered with litter and it's statues falling into disrepair. From Ackbar to Skywalker to Fel to the Devoted Technician, monuments to the heroes of the galaxy stood watchfully, their expressions carved into decaying solemnity in the fading twilight while countless feet tramped through the Square to visit the Galactic Museum or one of the many lavish restaurants perched on the edge of the durasteel square.

Even in the face of an impending invasion, the restaurants did not shutter their doors and the tourists continued to stream through the Plaza, rubbing the pillar of a statue for luck as they passed through to the casinos or restaurants, seeking their fortunes or to show off their wealth in the fanciest of eateries. A no-fly zone is strictly enforced, and a small team of Alliance Security Forces were on constant patrol in plains-cloths or uniforms, to keep the peace and protect the plaza from terrorists or rampant droids, as they had done for millennium past. Wars had been fought here within this den of corpulent greed and desperate envy. And still the monuments stood, silently staring down on all of them.

Now that the Sith attack has begun, it is up to the Alliance Forces to defend the tourists trapped within the once magnificent portal to Coruscant's past. And the Sith are coming, and as they move the skies fill with the whine of dropships and the sounds of battle. As the rest of Coruscant goes up in flame, so too must it's symbol of bedrock strength and greed.

 

[Rorschach]

Spending an extended amount of time on a dropship wasn't quite what Prometheus had in mind when it came to beginning an invasion. He'd already been on Coruscant for an extended period of time simply watching the Jedi and civilians flee in the presence of the Sith, but now he and a few others had been called upon to retake a monument from the hands of the Alliance. A place called Monument Plaza. Prometheus knew little of this place, other than that it was a haven for statues of Galactic heroes. Also a haven for destructive greed and consumerism, which would aid him and his comrades in manipulating others to help do their bidding. The plaza had several Jedi patrolling around on the inside. Some known, others undercover to assure their own safety. The rest of the floor was under the (not so) watchful eye of the Alliance Security Forces, all of whom would be no match for the Sith.

His hood remained stagnantly wrapped over his head, both red eyes concealed by pale skin as he mentally went through a checklist of his crew. A few unknowns, unknown to him at least, and a being known only as Experiment #16. The spliced human being gave off such an obvious tone of otherworldly horror that Prometheus knew he would excel in this Order, even on this mission. A few minutes passed before the flack and gunfire reached the ship, typical for a landing in such a battle. The shell took several hits, one of which went to the wing, but it was safe enough to land without difficulty. After the door dropped open; Prometheus and Experiment #16 strode out of the cabin, only to be treated to the magnificent sights of battle in progress.

There are tourists in the building, how quaint. Their appearance is obvious, especially so for #16, so stealth is no longer a viable option. With his saberstaff at the ready, Prometheus stands at the doorway in order to decipher their manner of entry. "There are only a few ways to get in, all of which will lead to open conflict. If you have an opinion on the matter, it would be helpful."

 

[Fyston]

He wasn't worried. He wasn't fazed. No amount of shelling, AA fire, blaster fire, or explosions could penetrate his experiences under Geist Weiss. He was trained to be the best and he simply did not respond to the chaos of the battlefield. Where normal beings might flinch, he stood perfectly still. Where other beings might duck for cover, he stood perfectly still. He was born to pain and chaos and no amount of either would faze him in the slightest.

And so, when they landed in the Plaza, he merely unhooked his lightsabers. He seemed like a terrible evil. That's because he was. It seemed to defy the will of the universe that he was created. His mere presence could dash all that was whole. He was a horrid monstrosity. A weapon of war. He should not be, yet he was. He turned his head as he purveyed the situation, if only to make it that much worse to any civilians he felt like looking at. Frightened beings were so interesting. There were a number of ways they could respond, though they typically chose one of three actions. The first being fight, though fighting a frightened sentient was easier than fighting a tree. The second being run. Simple enough in itself. The third being hide. He would never understand the choice to hide, as if the great evil would pass over them because they hid under a cafe table.

He knew well enough that their were people willing to fight. Those that would be worth fighting, anyway. He didn't need to go to them, as they would come to him, soon enough. We will draw them to us, my friend, said the Sithspawn simply through the telepathic connection he had established with the man. Prometheus would probably feel the eerie, evil feeling inside his mind that came with 16 using telepathy.

The Sithspawn identified a woman just inside the building's first floor, hiding against the outer wall. He scanned outward with the Force, ensuring that no potential foes were waiting to ambush him. With one tentacle, he lashed out and shattered the window. Not even a second later, he grabbed the woman by the neck, holding her in the air while he backed away from the building and into the more open plaza. He projected his thoughts so that all around may hear them. To him, it was no different from shouting. Other Sith would give you a reason, a lie to why they'd do something like this. I'm going to put it simply. For every minute that I don't have something, or someone, else to focus on, I'm going to eat a civilian.

And with that, the entire bottom portion of his face unhinged from the top part of his head, dropping down and revealing menacing rows of teeth and the overpowering stench of death, decay, evil, and orphans. He took the woman's arm in his mouth and ripped it off, devouring it before closing what could only be described as his mouth, which closed up as if it had never been there. He could have eaten the woman whole but he wanted to prove that he was serious without getting full. And so, he dropped the bleeding, panicked woman, allowing her to writhe on the ground. You have 30 seconds. She has less.

 

[Saul Perth]

This is it, Coruscant. Saul had made it here, and now so had the Sith. He had been deployed in the area known as Monument Plaza, shockingly enough, it was a plaza, filled with monuments. The important part however, was the civilians. Damn fools thought a battle would be like a fireworks show, idiots. Once the shelling started, it seemed to be a unanimous revelation that a glass window between you and a battle wasn't such fun.

The Jedi Knight stood behind a hastily erected durasteel defensive line, roughly one quarter of the way down the plaza. He was clad in simple clothes, black cloth pants and shirt, worn under a black leather Jedi Tunic with the GA logo embroidered in red. This was supplemented by lightweight, composite gauntlets and boots, covering to his elbows and knees respectively. Along the wall, four GA army privates manned heavy repeating blasters. To either side of him, a repetitive thud reminded him of the pair of deployable anti-air batteries, each manned by another two GA privates. Scattered in unorganized clumps along the wall, CorSec agents took cover, firing into a fresh wave of Imperial troops. CorSec teams were sweeping the outer restaurants, and moving too slow of course, all he had to do was keep their attention on the guys with guns and buy time for the evac shuttles to get the civilians to safety.

A fresh Imperial shuttle flew overhead. Even in the midst of a battle, Saul could feel the darkness on that dropship. He immediately ordered his anti-air batteries to bring it down, despite several hits, it landed safely and unloaded its cargo. Civilian, Alliance and Imperial alike stopped in their tracks as the telepathic message washed over them, bringing a matching wave of eerie silence over the battlefield. The quiet was pierced by the shattering of glass, then a scream. He didn't have time to wonder what this thing actually is, he only had time to act as he snapped out of his stunned state. He activated his lightsaber and leapt over the barrier.

"Don't just stand there, kill that thing!" He shouted to the men behind the wall, still frozen. He seemed to rouse them as blaster bolts filled the air again. His resolve returning, he rushed towards the creature.

"If you want them," he yelled at the empty face, "you're going to have to go through me."

 

[Ender]

The sounds of battle. The screams of dying men. She could feel the despair of the city. She could taste the burnt flesh in the air. She was no stranger to it. Admittedly, it had been some time since she had left the Shadow Walkers. Yet, the harsh training she faced with the Chiss was not something anybody could forget. Much less a Hapan. She had been calmly eating a bowl of noodles when the Sith arrived. She wore a large robe, not unlike that which Jedi wore. But, instead of using it to appear humble, she wore it to hide the armor underneath that she had stolen from the Chiss. The Medium Force Assault Armor was primed and ready to go underneath the brown robe. She felt the Sith and Stormtroopers near the restaurant and, in preparation, took one final bite of noodles. The rich noodles were delicious, and she knew from experience this would be the last warm meal she would enjoy for a while.

The Imperials entered the restaurant and started screaming for everybody to get down. Outside, she felt that...thing...end a life. She could feel the other force users around her. And she could feel the acolyte accompanying the troopers inside the noodle shop.

"You listening to me, princess? On the kriffing ground!" the Captain yelled at a civilian. This was followed by a blaster shot and screams of pain. The Hapan glared darkly at her noodles and rose. "Oh shit, JEDI!" the Captain cried and rifles were trained on her. The Acolyte's saber ignited.

Sighing, the Hapan held up her palm. "Not Jedi. Chiss." she said flatly, removing the cloak from around her. She could feel the troopers relax and lower the weapons. Except the Captain and the Acolyte.

"It says here you're MIA/AWOL." the Captain said, suspiciously, his dark eyes narrowing as he inspected her armor. "Last log in was nearly a year ago." the Acolyte was unsure. He could feel the determination, the calmness in the face of battle.

"That's right." Clarissa said, and then let loose an explosion of the Force into the Acolyte and Captain. They flew like cannonballs into the wall, both breaking their backs on impact. Blasters were raised, but before they could fire Clarissa pulled a table from one of the booths and ripped it across the room, crushing most of the squad. There was only one of the troopers left, he looked around, and whimpered. Before he could do anything else, he was thrown from the restaurant, shattering a window and landing in the center of the plaza. Clarissa followed, landing next to him gracefully in her armor. A few of the Alliance Soldiers turned to fire at her, but she dodged these easily. "Easy, boys. I'm on your side!"​

 

[Brandon Rhea]

Across all means of communication, be they nearby HoloNet screens, personal communication devices, military communication systems, and more, a small hologram of the injured Alliance Chief of State, Nathanaeu Bastele, appeared before everyone who could see it. His face was shredded, with one of his eyes practically hanging from the socket. His body was torn apart, with his insides visible. It was a gruesome sight, showing just how bad the battle was. If the Chief of State could be this hurt, anyone could. Anyone could be killed.

But he had a message to send, one more important than what happened to him. It was garbled, with the chaos of the battle and Sith jammers preventing it from fully being reached, but there was enough to understand what Bastele was saying:

"This is Nathanaeu Bastele. A Sith warship… descending… Jedi Temple. I don’t know… planning but... If you can hear… evacuate or head underground… all costs. Coruscant… gone. The Alliance is falling. Save yourselves and… Force… with you."

With that, the transmission faded away. The end of the Alliance had come.

 

[Brandon Rhea]

Life itself was dying. Coruscant, in this moment, was the closest any mortal would ever come to understanding what it would be like if Death reached out its cold hands and reaped the Force, or God, or nature, or whatever it was that made the universe spin. On the surface, and even in orbit, every living thing felt the destructive power of what the two tiny figures atop the hull of a Star Destroyer were doing. Life was being drained, sucked into the blackened and decrepit soul of a curse called Skywalker.

Those adept in history might have drawn a comparison to the ancient Dark Lord of the Sith called Darth Nihilus, a devourer of worlds, and life, and all the energy around him. Like that Dark Lord of old, Andraste was a wound in the Force, craving all of its energy and devastating everything in her path. No being escaped feeling its impacts; they felt drained, weak, like even the simplest of tasks required strength of herculean proportions. Escaping Coruscant, or even hiding, would feel like an eternity.

The planet itself was breaking. As the Empress drained the life and energy from all around her, the Dark Lord Vereor was ravaging the surface. A storm of pure Force energy was growing; lightning, real lightning and not artificially created from satellites, struck down from the clouds from all directions, in all streets and crevasses in the city, tearing swaths through buildings and dirt. The energies even reached into space, tearing apart ships and disrupting systems on so many others. The wind howled all through the sky, and tornadoes formed to destroy the artificial world that they were touching down on.

The temperature was dropping. At once it felt sickeningly hot but also colder than the snowy wastes of Hoth. The rain falling from the sky froze, turning into shards of ice as it fell, stabbing through the heads and bodies of countless thousands, if not more. The carefully constructed weather of the once-great capital of the Republic and the Alliance was torn asunder. The planet itself was now just as much the enemy of the Alliance as the Sith.

Yet at the center of all this madness was something beautiful. At the Jedi Temple, above which the Imperial Star Destroyer sat, a beautiful aurora was forming. Dark and dangerous energy collided into a green display of dancing lights, one that could have been a calming sight were it not for the life being drained from everything below it. At the core of this beauty, though, was something rotten, for the light was not a mere byproduct of the attack. It was the attack itself. The dark energies and lightning being displayed was the eldritch energy sucked into the very heart of this labyrinth by the Dark Lord himself, a reflection of the souls being sacrificed for more power.

Anyone with any sort of psychic awareness, be they Jedi or anyone even remotely attuned to the Force, could feel as those souls were taken and twisted into a dark purpose for which the Force should never have been used. It was a warning, a reminder of what the Chief of State said across the HoloNet.

Leave or die.

 

[Kaeb]

Monument Plaza
Hours before the Storm...​

The fabled earthly grounds of Monument Plaza had long ago been stripped of their emerald grass and colourful scenery, a finite example of the kind of beauty that was once available on a world dominated by metal and stone. That luxury was stamped out in previous conflicts, some forgotten and some still remembered in memoriam. Despite those conflicts, the grounds were not restored and were instead forgotten once towers filled with failing industries of tourism and commerce, exploiting historical marvels to further their own future, were built to replace history. Some aspects of what came before still remained, represented solely by museums and statues now deemed ancient by their observers. Motifs of times gone by were revered by those who saw them, but their affect on the population was minimal in recent times, as other industries arrived. Skywalker's hallowed form now presided over a gathering of restaurants and markets, Ackbar and Fel now flanked the bathroom facilities and children's playgrounds that had fallen into disarray. That which represented the glory of a once thriving world, now rested in silence, in some ways forgotten by those who saw them. But this was not a day to be forgotten, for the silence had been choked by the drums of war, until it screamed in terror at the destruction that boomed within it. The invasion, the war, had reached an area seemingly bereft of tactical advantage, any soldiers that had remained here were simply protecting civilians too ignorant to flee for their own lives, to unaware to care for that which came towards them. They were cattle to be slaughtered, and with ships and soldiers trampling the area around them, the slaughter had arrived.

Whisper observed from above, her ship slowly coming into view of a battle that had clearly been raging for hours since the Imperium had arrived. Other ships flanked her, all of them members of a fleet she had apprehended from deep beneath the surface of Coruscant. A fleet of ancient sewage treatment vessels, long abandoned by previous governments. She had killed many men to get them, in order to save whoever she could to redeem herself of past wrongdoings. She sought to be on the right side of history, even if it meant thrusting herself into the middle of a war she had no stake in. She had discovered that given the ancient nature of the fleet, it was incredibly hard to detect them on modern detection devices, giving her a much needed advantage if her fleet hoped to escape the conflict relatively unscathed. Slowly, she hovered the massive ships down towards the raging carnage, broadcasting on all communication waves that she was a privateer willing to rescue all who sought to flee the conflict with their lives intact. The ships were capable of housing hundreds if not thousands of people each, having to monitor the irrigation systems of an entire planet required manpower after all, so the ships had clearly been manufactured in accordance with those requirements.

Without hesitation, she abruptly landed the main vessel and sent signals for the others to land too, the rest of the fleet being directly tied to the main vessel via complex signals and archaic algorithms. Unholstering her blasters, she navigated throughout the ships many halls until she reached the main cargo bay compartment, clicking various buttons and pulling rusted levers until finally the docking ramps were released with an enormous deafening clank. The battle was suddenly before her. She picked her targets carefully as she cleared a path for refugees to reach the half a dozen vessels she had brought with her, Imperial Troopers and Sith alike fell to her precise weaponry as she fired repeatedly. Finally people began to scale the enormous ramps of the vessel, berating her with thanks as she ignored their sentiments. She needed to remain focused.

She needed to save as many people as possible.