Hoth: Blood and Ice

[Luth Khalan]

The steam vents were dark, but Luth had an optics suite in her helmet. She could make her way down and find a safe space to crawl into no problem. It was warm here, too. A good place to think. Very few people were likely to be hanging around here, either, as much of a mess as it still was. For her... she had always been rather small. Places like these had made a good hiding place for a scared kid, years ago. It was like home.

[Darth Bellious]

She wouldn't be alone there, however, not for long. For whatever reason, Darth Bellious would continue her explorations of that place, begun in the morning. And she'd do so with her sabre drawn and lit, serving as an ominous torchlight.

[Luth Khalan]

The red light alerted Luth at first, making her peak just a little around the corner of her hidey hole. However, she could see the very distinctive presence there. "... Bellious? Uh... hi."

[Darth Bellious]

"Oh hello Khalan. What are you doing down here, in the vents? Hopefully nothing that could get you *chuckle* reported."

[Luth Khalan]

She leaned out properly. "Well, I guess you could report me for finding a quiet place to think, but I'm not sure why."

[Darth Bellious]

"Independent thinking is a terrible crime. Someone could take you for a seditious plotter." Bellious smirked, leaning against the wall opposite Luth. She actually switched off the sabre, and darkness engulfed them.

[Luth Khalan]

Bellious can hear the gentle tap of her hand on her cheeks as she mock shock. "Imagine, someone thinking I of all people would turn on a government. That's never happened."

[Darth Bellious]

"Unconscionable, especially there is absolute no reason to do so, isn't there? Why would someone even wish to be this unpredictable."

[Luth Khalan]

"There always seems like there's a good reason," she sighed, voice sounding a little more serious. "And then it turns out a little different."

[Darth Bellious]

"Subversion is a dance with chaos." Moyr agreed, though it didn't sound as if she considered it a regrettable reality. Quite the opposite.

[Luth Khalan]

"You're a very philosophical sort of person, aren't you?" The other voice in the darkness mused thoughtfully.

[Darth Bellious]

"You can say that. Another way to think about it is that I am annoyed when some words are made into fetishes without an effort to understand them. This is a common malaise among the Jedi and the Sith alike. The incessant asking 'what do you mean by that?' makes various buffoons, pardon, balloons, burst. The government relies on such illusory inflation, to appear bigger than it truly is, but in the end it hinges on just a few loose cogs that can be pulled. I think you are a fellow querier, aren't you?" The other woman chuckled in the darkness.

[Dapper Dog]

They were not alone lots of vermin and critters were attracted to these vents and crawled over the many surfaces.

[Luth Khalan]

Fortunately, she was sealed in armor due to the cold. Even if some little rodent teeth were to get the idea to take a nibble, they weren't likely to get through. She was used to it, anyway.

""What kind of words losing all meaning annoy you the most, and how do you see them?" She asked. "I am... but mostly I ask questions. I don't tend to give my opinion on the answers."

She listened to the scurry sounds and noises.

"You know, when I was a kid, my nickname was 'Mouse'."

[Darth Bellious]

"Oh, there are many. Peace, order, power, justice, stability. I wouldn't even know where to begin with dissections unless you picked one." Moyr was similarly protected, but she reignited the sabre to scare off the critters. "Mine was Little Witch or Red Bitch or worse but it says more of the environment I was born into than my own nature. If I were petty I would have glassed Ryloth and its Huttese spice mines altogether. There are enough Twi'leks in the rest of the galaxy after all... But then I couldn't stop comparing myself to him and what he did to his home on Nathema."

There was a long pause. "But an idea of being likened to a fast-hopping rodent appeals to me on some level. Deserts of Ryloth had those, and I admired their freedom and cunning."

[Luth Khalan]

"Most people think vermin. But you're right. Free, cunning, and not many people think much of them until their crops are destroyed or someone gets really sick," she said, the smile in her voice audible. "I always liked the comparison, myself."

"It seems a lot of us came from less than ideal circumstances. I understand the temptation to glass a planet. I don't know what the hell Ausar wants with it, but she's welcome to it." She shook her head. "I'm curious about your feelings about order and power in particular."

[Darth Bellious]

"Order as natural is an illusion. It reflects the need for a logical and predictable universe. But the universe is anything but, always a step beyond predictability and logic. Everything in it evolves, and it itself evolves, even the most basic laws. To order it is to violate its breath. This is why I find the Eternal Empire so abhorrent. As long as order-makers are local, life in our galaxy will spring back and recover. But I am afraid this time it can be strangled. When Vitiate failed for the first time, it wasn't for the lack of trying."

She paused.

"And power... it is means to an end mistaken for an end itself by too many. They get drunk on power, hoard it, gorge on it, and revel in its excess and waste. At the very end of it, after all the husks in their passing, there is only their own tail to devour. Power is something to be used, not had. The Sith Code says it all, really."

[Luth Khalan]

"He's made a hell of a legacy this time. I think you're right about that in regard to the Eternal Empire's order." She said. "It was created from the perspective of someone who looked at the Sith Empire and decided it's not autocratic enough. Wild."

"As for general order... Mm. There's a balance to be found, I think. The world changes and evolves, but that doesn't mean it's unmitigated chaos, either. Living beings seek patterns as a matter of survival, even non-sapient ones, because it works. That's as natural to us as the changes we experience."

"... You can ignore that. I'm not really sure why I'm suddenly feeling the urge to give my opinion on things."

[Darth Bellious]

"I invite it." Moyr nodded. "You're not wrong. However, precisely for this propensity for pattern-seeking and ordering life incessantly exudes and some outliers push to extremities, there must be those who unclog the breath of the cosmos. Destruction and upheaval prevents stagnation. Right now, do you think we're at the cusp of unmitigated order or unmitigated chaos?"

[Luth Khalan]

"Yeah, in this particular case, obviously the kind of autocratic nonsense is total ordering under one will," she replied. "Although whether it will last long without the central will it was intended for... who knows. I don't think Valkorion ever actually intended anyone else to rule it. That level of order tends to be a house of cards."

[Darth Bellious]

"You speak about him in past tense, but his essence has survived Ziost."

[Luth Khalan]

"I was in the process of drowning in his mind as he tried to take over my body completely when he went," she said. "It's possible some part of him is still clinging to existence somewhere because he's too terrified of death not to have 15,378 contingencies, but he felt pretty gone."

[Darth Bellious]

"This is..." Moyr was dumbfounded, and it showed. She had not been prepared for this. Gone for good? There was a pinch of anger, that she had not been there to ensure it herself. "He was in my mind long ago, on Nal Hutta, but just shut off parts of it and left. It took a horrid sacrifice on my part to tear through that veil. How... did you even manage?"

[Luth Khalan]

"... Truthfully, I don't know. Especially because he used Lord Draahg to prime me as a vessel through exposure," she curled in on herself in her hidey hole a little. "His mind was so much... It felt like drowning, or being slowly dissolved. I just... tried to stay above water... as it were. I couldn't let everyone suffer. I managed to find a real fear. Since we were in a ritual of memory already, I figured I could manifest it. Vaylin got ahold of it and used it against him, along with Tethys. So I guess the answer is... with help."

[Darth Bellious]

"Draagh, I kriffin' knew it. I should have outed that bastard." Moyr huffed and listened to the rest in respectful silence. "...with help. Sylvain is right. We apparently need to take that leap of trust to stand a chance."

She sighed. "Vaylin, where does she stand now? Has extingushing Valkorion been enough for her?"