With great care, Anya sneaked amongst the towering shells of the broken vehicles, searching for her lost siblings. First she found her brother, forced to lift heavy crates of salvaged components and carry them across the yard; then she found her eldest sister, stooped over those same crates, forced to sift through them in search of dubious treasure; finally, she found her other sister, wriggling about in the crawlspaces of the wrecked ships, forced to fetch out armfuls of components that the bigger workers could not reach.
Presiding over all was a big, brutal-looking man with red skin, whom Anya soon discerned to be Sampa Grott himself. Upon seeing him, the girl knew immediately how her siblings had failed, for he was not a man who might be beaten easily in a fight.
Anya’s heart sank. What good might she do against such a man with her slight wooden dagger?
Yet the girl was small and clever, and liked to hide. With the robed man’s words still echoing in her mind, she devised a plan. Seeing that Sampa was filled with greed—for why else would he pluck slaves to work in his cradle when his riches were already so bountiful?—Anya concluded that he must have taken the biggest, most ostentatious home in the area, somewhere close by.
Sure enough, she found the place easily, and small and nimble as she was, she soon slipped inside through a crack in the shutters. The place was piled high with a lifetime’s worth of salvaged treasures, or those bought on the proceeds of the work of slaves, and Anya looked on, appalled at his greed but dazzled by the splendor on display.
A lesser person might have abandoned the quest and made off with the treasure, but Anya knew well that such objects were, in truth, worthless and was determined only to seek the freedom of her siblings, for that was the far greater prize. Thus, she found a hiding place beneath Sampa’s bed and waited.
Patience was her friend, and after a time Sampa returned to his home. He sat awhile amongst his treasures, counting his ill-gotten credits, but soon enough he retired to his bed, extinguishing the light and casting the entire room in shadowy darkness.
Anya, still patiently concealed beneath his bed, her heart thrumming, waited until she was certain the man had fallen into a deep sleep. Then, silently, she slid from beneath his bed and withdrew the little wooden dagger from her belt. Carefully, she crept closer to the bed, to where a shaft of moonlight from the window cast Sampa’s face in a silvery puddle of light. With a trembling hand, she reached out and placed the tip of the dagger against his throat.
He opened his eyes immediately, panicked, but upon feeling the tip of the dagger against his throat, he lay perfectly still, barely drawing a breath as he attempted to fathom what was happening. He searched for her face in the darkness, desperate to set eyes on his assailant. Yet he could see nothing of Anya, and thus had no sense that she was but a little girl with a toy dagger.
“What do you want?” said the man, his voice pleading. “All of my treasures are yours for the taking if you might only spare my life.”
Anya smiled, for she knew then that her plan had worked. “I am an assassin,” she hissed, speaking through the hollow fragment of petrified tree she had found earlier, to disguise her voice, “and I have been tasked with ending your life. Yet your pleading gives me pause. There is something I would have from you.”
“Anything,” begged the man.
“Three children,” said Anya. “The first, a boy you took from his hiding place in the Surabat River Valley as he played. The second, his sister, who came to find him bearing her father’s sickle. The third, their younger sister, who came to find them both with her father’s blaster. All have been put to work in your scrapper’s yard. I would have you release them and send them home to their mother. Do this, and then leave this world and never return. If you follow these instructions, I shall allow you to live. But know that if you fail in this task I shall return tomorrow and complete my work.”
Sampa hurriedly gave his assent, and Anya turned and fled, slipping out through the window before the terrified man had a chance to rise and turn on the light.
Confident that she had done all she could, Anya struck out for home, traipsing through the night to reach her family homestead. Her mother was sleeping, so, weary and nervous, Anya went straight to her own bed and fell into a fitful slumber.
With the coming of the dawn, Anya rose to discover her mother in the kitchen, cooking up a large pot of stew, for her brother and sisters had all returned in the early hours, freed at last from the terrible clutches of Sampa and his slavers. No explanation was given for their sudden liberation, and none ever knew that their wily younger sister had been the cause of their salvation—none but the silent spires themselves, who watched over everything that occurred within the Outpost and beyond.
Sampa Grott was never heard from again, and rumor around the Outpost was that he had fled into the depths of Wild Space to ply his trade on new worlds, where his enemies might never find him.
So it was that a child with a wooden dagger came to be a hero, an ecstatic mother was reunited with her children, and everyone on Batuu was able to safely enjoy the beautiful Surabat River Valley once more.
N THE DESOLATE PLANET Moraband, high on a weatherworn mountaintop, stands the statue of a robed Twi’lek.
For a thousand years or more, since the ancient times when the world was known by the name Korriban, this lonesome figure has cast its gaze upon the bleak landscape below, and pilgrims venturing to Moraband in search of succor and forbidden knowledge have detoured to pay tribute to the unnamed figure, a man to whom they imagine great deeds to be ascribed—for he must have been a Sith warrior of startling renown to have such a monument raised in his honor.
Some such pilgrims have scoured the records and ancient texts for mention of the lonesome figure, but if his deeds were ever written, they have long been expunged from the histories of the galaxy, for not a single trace of him might be found. All that is left for the pilgrims is the eerie, maudlin atmosphere they feel as they gaze upon the Twi’lek’s graven face, and the stories they have since imagined, of how he once conquered whole worlds, imbuing himself with such power that all who knew him quaked in fear at his coming, for to see his face meant certain death.
There are others who claim that they have seen the statue weep an ebon tear upon the coming of the dawn, a single droplet rolling down its cold, hard cheek as if the stone were lamenting the passing of another day.
Thus, the statue has earned a variety of monikers, including the Weeping One, the Silent Watcher, and the Graven Lord, and many have theorized its true nature. None, however, has come close to the truth, for the statue’s origins are far stranger, and more tragic, than even the most creative of pilgrims might guess.
The story begins with a boy, a Twi’lek named Ry Nymbis, who, since the very moment of his birth, proved nothing but trouble to his mother. Even the midwives of Ryloth had sensed a strangeness in the babe as they’d bathed him and toweled him and handed him back to his mother, hurrying her home from the medical facility so they might not have to spend more time than necessary in the child’s company.
Try as the mother might—for she wished only to love and protect her child as most mothers do—she had not been able to shake the ill feeling that the babe’s presence inspired, even as he slept in his cot at night. The child’s father, so affected by the aura that surrounded him, soon grew distant, playing little part in the boy’s upbringing and welfare, preferring to take work away from the home, which caused a rift to form between him and his wife, eventually resulting in their separation.
As the child grew, aunts and uncles, cousins and playmates all stayed away, giving the family a wide berth, for they, too, sensed the strangeness within the boy. No one could quite put a finger on it—a feeling of deep disquiet, of wrongness, as if the child had been born ill-tempered, as if something foul had seeded itself in his very soul.
Outwardly, the boy showed no sign or physical manifestation of his bizarre character, but he understood all too well the effect he had on others and
became solitary, maudlin, and quiet.
Eventually, after many months of hiding her shame, the mother grew desperate and wondered what might be done. She visited soothsayers and medics, shamans and doctors, and while all acknowledged the unusual nature of the boy and his bizarre influence on others, none could ascribe any particular condition.
Then, one day, close to her wit’s end, the mother was approached by a robed figure who sought her out in the market. The man—an alien of a species she had never before encountered—seemed kindly and honest and, unlike all the others, who had been repelled by her child, said he wished only to help. He claimed he could explain the boy’s affliction and knew what might be done to remedy the situation. She ushered the man back to her home, for he seemed to understand her plight, and there he made predictions to her regarding the child’s future.
The boy, he claimed, had been born with the capacity for great power—a connection to the living Force that underpins the universe—but, if left unchecked, could prove a danger to all who came to know him. Instead, what grew within him must be nurtured through the proper channels so the boy might learn to better control it, and only then would he, and those he had left behind, find peace.
The alien—whose name was Darth Caldoth—explained that he belonged to a great order and that, if the mother was willing, he might take the boy under his wing and allow the child to serve as his apprentice.
The mother was extremely conflicted, for she loved her child despite his affliction, but she saw the truth in Darth Caldoth’s words. She knew that the boy would never be happy on Ryloth, where he would be shunned by those around him and never accepted for who or what he was. She feared that his powers might be put to misuse as his resentment grew and he learned to punish those who had rejected him. She understood how he might become a danger to others, and thus to himself.
So it was that the mother agreed, tearfully, to allow Darth Caldoth to take the boy, for with his guidance she knew her child would flourish. She said her good-byes, and the boy was prized from her arms and spirited away in a shuttle, never to return home to Ryloth again.
So began the apprenticeship of Ry Nymbis.
However, Darth Caldoth’s methods were extreme, and what he had seen in the child was a seed of hate that he knew could be shaped and molded. In that manner, the child might come to understand the ways of the Sith and turn his hatred into power. Thus, the child was first of all abandoned on the forest world of Simoth to a camp of slavers, who bred amongst their captives the fiercest, most bloodthirsty gladiators in all the known galaxy.
They took the child in as one of their own, tossing him into the pit to face a multitude of challenges, from slothkins to krastenanes, dianogas to—worst of all—other slaves. Yet the child somehow defeated them all, and as time passed he grew stronger and more agile, honing his battle skills whilst stoking the flames of his hatred. He learned to live for the kill, to trust no one but himself—to survive against all the odds. When he was wounded he embraced the pain and learned to grow stronger from it, and though the other slaves shunned him, they learned to respect him, and to fear him, for all that he was. The boy forgot about his mother and Darth Caldoth, and the pit became his entire world. He knew nothing but to fight, and in that bleak furnace he was forged—a coarse but powerful weapon.
For seven years the child worked the pit as a champion of the Simothian slavers, until one bright and clear day a ship came spiraling out of the sky, brushing through the canopy of towering malma trees to land on the outskirts of the slave camp. The figure that emerged from the vessel wore robes of black silk, and in his hand flashed a saber of burning red—the very color of Ry Nymbis’s blossoming hatred. Within minutes the newcomer had effortlessly slaughtered the entire camp—slavers and prisoners alike—all save for Ry Nymbis himself, whom he forced to kneel in the mud before finally throwing back his hood to reveal his face.
Those alien eyes awoke memories in Ry Nymbis—memories of being taken from his home and abandoned on Simoth—and, enraged, he reached for his sword and rushed into battle with the newcomer, bellowing a challenge.
Yet, despite all Ry Nymbis’s years of experience fighting the creatures and fellow slaves of the pit, Darth Caldoth was by far his better in combat, and he disarmed the young Twi’lek with a flick of his wrist, sending him sprawling to the ground, the end of one lekku severed and smoldering. There Ry Nymbis lay on the ground, subdued, the raging point of Darth Caldoth’s saber hovering at his throat.
The Twi’lek’s humiliation was complete, and Darth Caldoth explained that Ry Nymbis’s real training could begin.
The trials undertaken by the young apprentice in those early days were punishing and might have broken a lesser man, but Darth Caldoth had chosen his apprentice well, and his years spent in the gladiator pits had hardened Ry Nymbis, such that he thought nothing of taking another’s life and faced the potential of his own death without the merest flinch. He had grown to believe in his own superiority and knew that, in all the galaxy, only his master had the power to humble him.
Together, the two traveled far and wide, undertaking missions with opaque purpose, searching the dusty stacks of ancient treasure hauls or the remnants of long-stilled battlefields in search of mysterious artifacts to add to Darth Caldoth’s growing collection.
In an ancient, crumbling temple—a secret place, sacred to the Sith of ages past and carved from the black jade of a mountainside on a long-abandoned moon—Ry Nymbis was once again abandoned to his fears. For seven days and seven nights he stumbled through the nightmarish ruins, hounded by the specters of those who had plagued him when he was a child, by a twisted reflection of the woman who had birthed him, by the living possibilities of the man he might have become, all fashioned into existence by the very power that flowed like burning magma through his veins. One by one he cut them down, freeing himself of their tethers to the past, nurturing the hate for them that swelled in his breast. He emerged from the trial half dead but exhilarated, and it was not long before he returned to his studies with renewed vigor.
Soon after, Darth Caldoth led his apprentice on the hunt for a saber of his own, stalking a lonesome knight through the electric mist of a night world until, confronting the warrior deep in the ashen swamps, Ry Nymbis choked the life from her and took her weapon, fracturing its heart until it bled freely in his hands.
Yet even as his power grew, so did Ry Nymbis’s hate for his master, for Darth Caldoth had shown his apprentice that hate was the path to power, and Ry Nymbis knew that only Darth Caldoth himself stood in the way of his own rise to greatness. Secretly, he harbored thoughts of destroying his master and taking his place, but he knew that his patience would be rewarded, for there was still much to be learned about the ways of the Sith.
Ry Nymbis’s greatest trial was yet to come, however, for—confident that his apprentice was ready—Darth Caldoth led him on a pilgrimage to a distant asteroid in the cold depths of Wild Space where a powerful Force cult had built a fortress overlooking a fissure in the void. There, Darth Caldoth urged his apprentice to stare deep into the essence of the living Force itself.
The dark truth of his inner nature was revealed to Ry Nymbis, and after three nights of gibbering insanity, he rose once more, wiser and stronger and fully cognizant of the path before him.
Where once he had studied the art of combat and the power of hate, now he set out to study the mystic arts of millennia past, under the tutelage of his master. For Darth Caldoth had spent centuries scouring the galaxy for relics from the bygone ages, seeking out dark arts and alchemical practices forgotten by the living, studying those archaic powers so that he, too, might wield them.
Together, the two Sith pored over crumbling scrolls and stone engravings so old that their very existence had passed into myth, their languages forgotten, their creators long extinct. Wicked sorceries spilled from their fingertips, and even the greatest knights quaked in fear at their coming, master and apprentice both, for they had learned how to harness
their hatred in ways not seen in the galaxy for a thousand years.
So powerful had they become that they were unopposed, masters of all they surveyed. And yet, as is the way with such men, Ry Nymbis remained unfulfilled, hungry for ever more power, for during his apprenticeship the Twi’lek had learned something other than hate: he had also learned envy and greed.
So it came to pass that Ry Nymbis became increasingly suspicious of his master, believing Darth Caldoth to be holding back in his training, reserving for himself the most powerful of the teachings they had worked so hard together to uncover. Jealous rage burned within him, stoking the fires of hate, and Ry Nymbis knew that soon he would be forced to move against Darth Caldoth if he were ever to realize the full potential of his power.
Darth Caldoth was wise in the ways of the Sith, however, for he, too, had once been an apprentice and had long before seen to the demise of his own master, whose body lay deep in the crypts of the same abandoned temple in which Ry Nymbis had faced the demons of his past.
Thus, ever cautious, Darth Caldoth learned never to turn his back on Ry Nymbis, and the apprentice knew that, were he to tackle his master directly he would face certain death, for while he was his master’s equal in combat, he had yet to access all the many rituals and scrolls that Darth Caldoth kept to himself, and thus the unknowable powers that might be extracted from them.
Yet his patience grew thin, for Darth Caldoth became ever more secretive, and where once he had encouraged the boy, he dissuaded the man. Ry Nymbis began to suspect the truth—that all that time, Darth Caldoth had used him, only taking on an apprentice so the master might benefit, that Ry Nymbis might assist him in securing the power he had so long yearned for.
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