Ask The Haunting of Hoth

[Kayden Skyler]

Spoiler: Music OOC

There they were, two and two hundred; the former on a high rise and the latter down below. The first, not to be denied, Sith by all rights, and two there were. The second, an outpost of pirates disguised as a hamlet, their hive buried within the mountainside.

Kayden might have taken them out by himself. He had chased them far enough, pursuing on their tail without them ever catching on, their heads too thick. Though, having crossed paths with a fellow Sith on the way, well, two was better than one.

“There they are,” the Sith Champion confirmed through binoculars, though he might never claim himself of that rank aloud. It was all so…tedious, petty, for indeed what the hell was a “Sith Champion” besides someone who sounded like they had just won a pro-wrestling match?

Kayden, a big guy, might win one, but the fight he had in mind today was…different. Those pirates below, hiding in the pale pit that was their hideout on Hoth, could only be so lucky. Many would die quickly, keep things simple and all, but some would die slowly. It was…inevitable… As inevitable as three periods between words…

Atop that mountain peak, Kayden would offer his binoculars to his companion, if they needed them. They would find a few huts and hovels, some lazy drunken fools in the area with some more sober guards at the perimeter, especially the gate.

Though, these were mere pirates; pests who had stolen something that Kayden wanted badly. He had not told his partner what that was, they would find out soon enough, but he had promised this Acolyte that helping a Champion in need would not go…unrewarded…


@Karath

 

[Aria Rosalie]

As the talon-like, black shape of Winter, Aria's Preybird passed over the white landscape, Aria let her droid fly as she sat on the bunk in her cramped bedchamber, watching the frozen landscapes of Hoth pass by on a holoscreen before her. She coughed, bracing herself with a clawed, somewhat-webbed hand against the small workbench across from her, fighting to catch her breath. Fighting to draw air, she let her mind drift to a certain darkness like that of the place that had almost been her tomb, a grim old tower in the frozen mountains of Scitheris. A pang of longing for a life lost, then cold, emptiness, the absence of all feeling, desire, hope. Her coughing stopped. The air seemed a little colder. She ran a hand over her head, back across her mangled, once-frostbitten ears.

Pirates, she thought. She didn't feel anything towards these beings she had been sent to slay. And for what? The glory of the Sith?

"Damn the Sith and their passions," she muttered under her breath. She was an acolyte of the Dark Side; the Sith only a shadow of a greater dark, the cold, unfeeling void that lurked between the stars and in grim black mountains. Sorrow, longing, weaponized, a queen of the wraiths; this is what she wished to be, not some vain champion of passion and blood.

But Champion Brynjar had given her this task, and Brynjar had been her savior, rescued her from the cold, brought her frostbitten, skeletal form away from that cold tower, to Korriban. There she would learn of the Force, of the Dark Side. She owed him a debt, she often felt, and so she had done as he had commanded.

-------------------

She stood next to the man at the top of a snowy rise, clad in black combat robes, arms wrapped in black cloth. A simple lightsaber hung at her belt next to a metal parrying dagger with a wide crossguard. She wore wide boots to accommodate her clawed feet, something she often left behind, but Hoth was a cold world. It reminded her of other cold yesterdays, and in a way, she liked it, sinking into a comfortable, familiar melancholy.

"Let us bring their lives to an end, then," she said, her voice whispy, weak, with a bit of a rasp. Her hand rested upon her saber. Though in the Dark Side she sought absolution from feeling, a part of her hungered for the spark of ignition, the glow of red, the smell of burning flesh in the air... It made her feel alive. She removed the lightsaber from her belt, it in one hand, her dagger in the other. For the moment, she abstained from igniting it. "Do you have a plan, or shall we begin this... violence?" she asked, a single cough following, though she managed to stifle it.

 

[Kayden Skyler]

Spoiler: Music OOC [Recurring]

Kayden smiled beneath his helmet. Oh, yes, there will be violence. There will be blood. His Selonian counterpart aside, and while Kayden enjoyed a good chill, the Human didn’t want to freeze to death; he sported cold clothing, white as snow, with a simple flight helmet to ward away the wind.

“I figure we can approach the hamlet as two lost figures looking for warmth and shelter,” he relayed. “They’ll shoot at us, turn us away or invite us in and, if the latter, will ask what valuables we have on our person.” His tone was rather matter-of-fact. “I’ll answer, ask them what they have and, once they confirm of my prize, well…” He shrugged. It didn’t take the Force to know what would happen next. “Let’s move along.”

Down the two Sith went, a shrill wind wrapping around them as though begging them to turn back; not for their sake but for the pirates' below. These two souls would not listen. They approached the hamlet, a few guards ready to receive them with blasters at the ready.

“The kark do you want?” A big guy spoke.

“Warmth and shelter,” Kayden answered feebly. His arms were coiled around his body, making it look like he had been out in the wild of Hoth for days and nights, his lightsaber hilt hidden at his waist.

“This is a private settlement, chump,” the guard chortled. He eyed the two figures up and down, noting the contrast in their outfits, but Kayden felt that the eyes were mainly looking at the packs on his own person if nothing else. “You carrying anything of value?”

Typical shakedown. What sluts. “Credits for sure, can pay our way. We just…please…we just need a place to stay… We’re lost out here!”

“I hear ya, I hear ya, but we ain’t a hospital, pal. You can come on in but not free of charge. Be prepared to offer.”

More than you know. Kayden knew what this meant: the pirates could have gone straight for the triggers but intended to torture their guests for information of more valuables. That was fine. Most importantly, they were in, so Kayden followed his hosts into the hamlet.


@Karath Nikolas

 

[Aria Rosalie]

[[Lol I don't plan on writing Aria this exposition and internal monologue heavy all the time, I'm just treating this as her intro thread and tossing some stuff out there]]

Aria stood wordlessly, silent as a ghost as Kayden did the talking. She cared not for this game of deception both he and the pirates were playing. No matter. She was patient. Her blades of fire and steel would meet the enemy soon enough. She nodded once as the guards opened the gate, boots crunching in the snow as she followed closely behind Kayden.

The outpost was ramshackle but utilitarian. An assortment of dwellings and other structures made from the refuse of the galaxy lined the frozen "streets." Parts of welded-together starship hulls, sheet metal, various antennae and dishes protruding at odd angles, the hum of fusion cores for heat ever-present in the air. The smell of cooking food, of fuel, of chemicals. In another time, before Korriban, she might've found the place interesting. A place where adventures began, perhaps. Now, it was nothing but a place that was soon to be yet another graveyard, red blood on white snow... It was always that contrast. It always came back to that. Red blood, on white snow. It had been hers, once, just before the tower, before Korriban...

Remain in the present, you dismal wretch.

A claw tapped against the lightsaber hilt within her black robes. She cast a passing thought towards what the Champion's prize was, but it didn't concern her. She was there to kill.

Another round of racking, air-denying coughs, hand brought up to her mouth in a futile attempt to stop them.

"I think I've caught a bit of a cough out here in the cold," she said to the pirates, a grim, sardonic statement that was perhaps as close as she ever came to humor. Soon the walls of this place would be painted red with their blood.

 

[Kayden Skyler]

Spoiler: Music OOC [Recurring]

One pirate looked at that black-robed figure as though the snow had just spoken to him. “Sounds like you need some medicine,” he replied no less sardonically. “Better be careful. People tend to…freeze to death…out here.”

That much is certain, Kayden agreed silently as he found an uncomfortable chair in what was little more than a hut. Heaters glowed vibrantly amid lamps, steam rising from cups and bowls of stew, but Kayden sought a different warmth and had a different hunger.

These pirates had their own too, he knew; the kind that could only be satiated with violence and death. Sporting no banners or sigils, they looked less unified than sophisticated, but each was armed with a blaster and more.

“So,” said another pirate, some unmasked Pyke in the wrong place at the wrong time. “What do you have to trade?”

Kayden took his own mask off just then, set the helmet in his lap, spread both lips beneath smiling eyes. “That is my question for you, good person. What do you have to trade?”

The pirates looked at each other. Pyke took a step closer. “That ain’t how this works.”

“I’m looking for something,” Kayden sighed. “A star chart of a little corner of Wild Space. Some poor souls lost it when their ship fell prey to...pirates... You have it. I want it.”

He could have used Force Spill the Beans if he wanted, could have ignited his saber right then and there, but there was more than one way to play with simpletons like these. In that one moment, they all but spoke aloud that said star chart was in their possession right here on Hoth.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, drukhead.” Liar. “Now how about the two of you hand over everything you got.” Pyke’s hand want to holster at hip. Bad, bad move. "Or I lift my hand and take it from you anyway."

Again, Kayden could have ignited his saber right then and there, waved his hands, but he had a better idea. He leaned back in his chair and…waited for his partner to…chime in.


@Karath Nikolas

 

[Aria Rosalie]

Aria remained standing, leaning against a support column of rusty old rebar near Kayden. Ears attuned, she watched as the pirate's hand drew closer to the blaster on his hip. A feeling of calm began to crash over her. Finally, it was time. No more words, no more wasted breath.

She took a step forward, motion fluid, almost graceful as she produced the simple gray lightsaber from within her cloak. She ignited it, the end of the blade passing through the man's neck as she did so. He fell to the ground, grasping at the cauterized wound that would soon end him. A moment's hesitation hung in the air from the others. They had expected blasters.

A bolt sizzled through the air, deflected off Aria's blade into the snow. Turning, she plunged the metal parrying dagger in her left hand into another man's chest, blood falling on the white snow. Her motions were carefully measured, each step with a planned goal, each movement of her arms with grim purpose. More blaster bolts, more deflections, blades of fire and steel meeting with flesh...

A sharp hiss escaped her as a bolt shrieked across her right forearm, something between a hit and a graze, the smell of burnt flesh and hair greeting her senses as her saber fell from her hand. She took cover behind another rebar column, saber meters away.

Blasters, she thought. She ducked out of the way as a man with a vibro-axe charged her, darting to the side. The axe came crashing down at her again, clanging against the dagger that remained in her left hand. A scream of rage left the man as he leaned into his axe with all his strength. She drew on the dark and on the cold, but her strength began to fail her as she struggled to hold her ground, dragging in ragged, throat-burning breaths of air tinged with iron and burnt flesh.

A sickening crescendo of blood-stained memory on that far off world, Korriban... The taste of iron, and not only in the air. That day, even her master Brynjar, the old Champion, had been afraid of her.

She lunged forward, needle-sharp teeth connecting with flesh, her mind torn from the world of blades, of cities, of starships, away to something older, one of tooth, claw and of endless terror. The man fell to the ground, lifeblood leaving him from a ragged tear in his throat. She blinked, eyes wide, bloodshot, vision clouded. Dark red stained the brown fur of her face, the dagger held low at her side. In her mind was a strange clarity, along with it a hint of nausea. She extended a clawed hand, her lighsaber arcing up from the snow and returning to its master. She ignited it once more.

 

[Kayden Skyler]

Spoiler: Music OOC

A lightsaber burned, a blaster fired, and a bowl of soup was nice and hot as Kayden slurped from a spoon. While his companion went about annihilating pirates, he sat back in his chair enjoying the show. It wasn’t much of one, of course, given the opposition, but they were proving themselves well enough.

The Champion had not overlooked the graze against the Acolyte’s arm. Ouch! That must have stung, probably more than someone’s neck had after Aria had since severed it from the shoulders. That had been a quick death. Yes, more. Kayden needed more of those. The slow deaths would follow, but not yet. More.

Aria was giving it. Oh, did she give. The furry Selonian was no less ferocious, chomping into a throat with vicious teeth, likely salivating as much as one man’s member might if he was allowed to sit down much longer. More.

A bolt soared his way, though whether it was fate or Force that had allowed it to pass by beside his head was any man’s guess. O-Kay-den. Having drank his fill, the Sith felt forced into this fight by no choosing of his own, another shot gunning for his gut. More.

His hilt ignited; a red blade poking out above his crotch to ward the blaster bolt away toward its shooter. The pirate fell, a hole in his stomach. More! Kayden greeted his adversaries with a slash her way and a stab his way. MORE.

He deflected, he dodged, he cleaved, he conjured a Force-wave into a group of pirates rushing him after leaving the hut. They fell into the snow on their backs. He leapt across them, trailing blade through necks, and landed to observe his Acolyte. “MORE!”


@Karath Nikolas

 

[Aria Rosalie]

More bolts flew, crackling against her red blade. She spared a sole glance towards Kayden. The champion seemed to be enjoying all of this blood and fire. She wished for a moment that she also did, how much simpler this would all be. She merely wanted this over, for the shrieks of those destined to be her enemies to fall silent, replaced by the ever-howling wind.

She coughed, merely missing a blaster bolt which sizzled as it grazed her saber, slamming into an old metal cargo crate in a shower of sparks behind her. Another grazed her shoulder as she stepped to the side. She coughed again as another brave soul with a vibrosword approached her, fear plain in his eyes. He fell to her dagger, flecks of blood arcing away from his neck and her blade as it shrieked through the air, spotting the grey metal wall behind.

Another cough, then another. More blasterfire, more blades, more corpses at her feet. She crouched behind a steel barrier, once part of a hull, chest burning, each awful cough denying the catharsis of a breath.

How simple it would be to merely let it end here, in this cold place... The world an edifice of winter. It would be her grand tomb. She would lie here in the cold forever, and remind of her sorrow any who treaded within her fortress. She would haunt this world, if only a bolt would strike her through the heart... The thoughts calmed her.

She regained her breath, the burning in her chest fading, body and psyche filled with a strength that was older than the stars, far older than the Sith... She rejoined the fray, blades finding their prey, teeth meeting once again with flesh, red covering her face, horror in her own cold eyes.

 

[Kayden Skyler]

Spoiler: Music OOC [Recurring]

It was a passing glance, just enough to see and then move on, leaving Aria to her ways and woes and whatever else seemed good for her. Kayden was already upon more foes, more and more, to see them fall as they saw no more.

Another group at his left, emerging from a building. Better positioned, they used the crates as cover that stood between them and the Sith. The latter was exposed, standing in the open, but these were fools. Only a fool would get shot by them.

His saber swept, whipping across the wind to smack a bolt aside, sliced the other way through a flurry of snow as another bolt returned to its owner's chest. The pirate fell backward, the pirate beside him looked concerned, but the pirates beside him kept shooting.

Again and again and again! Kayden deflected and began to dance, stepping forward toward his prey. There were enemies behind him, he could feel them, but they were focused on his Acolyte. She was on her own as much as the Champion was, such as he was.

“There!” Another bolt, another parry, another fallen pirate. “And there!” Free hand squeezed a snowflake, lifting an opponent into the air by the throat from meters away. Kayden flung the corpse into the bodies of the living like a bowling ball into pins, knocking them down behind their crates. Then he converged.

“So soon!?” They began to flee, heading toward the cave. Finally. Their death paced toward them, saber ignited at his side, as a red laser soared toward his head. Just in time, the blade bit the bolt, but the sniper was nestled atop a metal tower that doubled as an antenna.

So Kayden tossed his saber toward it, watched as it sliced through the metal struts and sent the tower tumbling, then spiraled back to its owner like a boomerang.

There was a scream as the sniper fell into the snow. By the time he landed, a boot was upon his skull, stomping. Again and again and again!


@Karath Nikolas

 

[Aria Rosalie]

A dead man with a ragged tear in his neck slumped away from her as she spat dark red, staining the snow beneath her feet. Her lightsaber sizzled against the white as her strength began to falter once more. A creaking, crashing sound of steel bending and cables snapping echoed from some distance off. For now, it seemed, she was alone, the ground littered with the corpses of ten beings, all in various states of disassembly. She stood in what had been a makeshift bar, she realized. A thin roof lie overhead, the sides open to the air. Four electric heaters hummed and glowed nearby, old cable spools and crates acting as tables and chairs. For the moment, she stowed her blades.

At least they had died drunk, she thought, lifting a half-empty liquor bottle from a table and downing nearly the rest of it, washing away the taste of blood and fear. More blasterfire in the near distance. She hoped silence would come soon. She coughed once, turning to the makeshift bar counter. A young Bothan girl of perhaps late teens cowered there next to it, seeking to hide in the shadowed corner.

Kill them all, her master had directed. Her lightsaber shrieked to life, steam rising as she stepped towards the being, nearly dragging her saber through the snow alongside her.

"I'm just the bartender, I'm not a pirate, please..."

She looked into the Bothan's eyes, reminded of who she had once been, before Korriban, before the Sith... She longed for those days that she would never see again, and that longing only drove her further into madness, again drawing the darkness into her. She turned away from the young Bothan, eyes shimmering with sorrow above her ghoulishly stained face. She made towards the sounds of chaos, coughs racking her body every few steps. She deflected a bolt into one man, cut another down. She arrived as Kayden pounded a man's skull into the snow, a hiss of aknowledgement leaving her.

"Nearly all dead now," she said, her voice a thin whisper, magnified and crackling with static over her vox.

 

[Kayden Skyler]

Spoiler: Music OOC

The snow, sparkling so white, was suddenly spattered by scattered stripes of red. Kayden lifted his boot from that snow, or struggled to, having gotten it stuck. It wasn’t powder or ice that tried to trap the boot but whatever a Human’s head had once been before it became...mush.

The boot would clean itself as its owner walked, but first he turned to receive his Acolyte. The blade hissed back into the hilt of the Champion, a gesture in itself, before he narrowed his eyes into his partner’s as though searching for a soul.

“Nearly, indeed.” The dead would lay where they fell, buried by the next snowstorm to freeze over this hell, and no one would mourn their passing. They would be ice cubes soon enough. Let the wampas feed off the carrion. Let the dead haunt Hoth. “Come.” He clipped the hilt to his belt. “Let’s go kill the rest.”

The pair of Sith marched toward the cave. The escapees had since vanished within it. At the maw, there was darkness, but deeper into the opening was artificial lighting to guide the newcomers.

Kayden led the way unless Aria walked beside him, the former having half a mind to let her lead, see what else she was made of, but she seemed to have a habit of getting shot at. “Most of these morons will be gathered together, pointing blasters, alerted to our presence by those who fled.”

He leaned in to whisper toward his fellow Sith, pretending like it was necessary; like two kids breaking into a haunted house. “Should we flush them out with fire? Pyrokinesis? Something else?”


@Karath Nikolas