Hoth: Blood and Ice

[Dapper Dog]

“Is there a way to divert the wheel? Even small things can turn the course of something large by small deviations…”

"What wheel?" he asked a bit confused.

[Sylvain Torsin]

“The metaphorical one you alluded to just now…” Sylvain replied.

[Dapper Dog]

He grinned at that and said, "You can't but you will have to. You do not fight the man, you fight his legacy, the wheel is both in motion and already derailed."

He then coughed up more blood and said, "What were we talking about?"

[Sylvain Torsin]

That damn word again… Everyone and their damn legacies…

Sylvain looked the obviously diminishing old man up and down with a look of… sympathy.

“We were thanking you for dragging us out of where we found ourselves… Hoth can be as tempestuous as Korriban it seems. You keep company with some dangerous mistresses.”

[Layne Hoshin]

"...Great, so we're not fighting him, we're fighting... his eternal empire or whatever... or something... his 'legacy'. And we can't derail things but we have to but it already has. I don't get it, but I get it... visions don't make sense."

Or he was just being stubbornly cryptic on purpose.

"This doesn't explain... why us? Why me and Torsin? Why did *we* have the same dream and came out here to chase you down?"

[Dapper Dog]

"The Force builds connections, always has... destinies become entwined," he responded.

[Layne Hoshin]

"It can't just be that..." she said, the tiredness coming through her voice, "...this is not what I came out here thinking to find. I thought..."

She was so tired; not just mentally but physically too. She had to sit back down. Slump down, more like it.

"...I thought this was going to be about my ancestors. Some, I don't know... loose ends or something. I didn't want to hear that the emperor is still around despite everything I did, or that he has some sort of 'legacy' that we have to fight now. The Force could've picked literally anyone else to do that... Not like there's a shortage of Jedi or Sith around..."

[Dapper Dog]

"The universe does not care what you want, little child," he said laughing and then coughing up blood. "You can always just walk away, nothing compels you to move forward."

[Layne Hoshin]

"You listened to our conversation, you know I can't."

[Dapper Dog]

"Then why are you complaining, little child?" he responded. "We can't have all the answers and whatever you are looking for will probably be found in the last place you deign to look."

[Layne Hoshin]

"Is that another cryptic hint," she pushed herself to stand once more, "...or are you just throwing platitudes at me to annoy me?"

She sighed. "So? Where do we start then? You were always hard to deal with, but for whatever reason, you helped me before. I'm guessing the Force didn't bring you and us out here if you weren't going to help us somehow again."

Whatever that means, help coming from a dark side prophet like Spindral.

[Sylvain Torsin]

Sylvain just stood there quietly as the two conversed back and forth.

Legacy…

The word kept coming back over and over to him… Baras’ words reverberated in his head.

All that matters now is your legacy, what we leave behind…

He eventually decided to interject, “Spindral… did the Emperor have any… children in life?”

[Dapper Dog]

“This is an enemy beyond you, beyond all of us, alone. But you have allies, some hiding… some reluctant, and some unwilling. I don’t have insight on what you are looking for but I know a place that could reveal secrets,” he pointed to where they encountered the vergence.

“You are not ready, to go deep into the Dark spaces would destroy you, but I believe there are secrets there. I could be wrong, I could be lying to you.”

He grinned revealing red back teeth and continued, “The darkness certainly lied to you, but as they say… *bloody cough* *bloody cough* there is always a truth inside the best lies. I have lied to you, more than once, take that what you will children of Sith.”

Sylvain just stood there quietly as the two conversed back and forth.

Legacy…

The word kept coming back over and over to him… Baras’ words reverberated in his head.

All that matters now is your legacy, what we leave behind…

He eventually decided to interject, “Spindral… did the Emperor have any… children in life?”

"What woman could seduce an Immortal Emperor?" he responded.

[Sylvain Torsin]

“A woman named… Legacy…” Sylvain said to himself more than anything. Obviously not being literal.

“If there is more to be known here… then I will return.”

[Layne Hoshin]

She took that in. That the vergence showed her truths wrapped in lies she already knew. What lies Spindral had told though, she could not fathom. And the rest? To go back into the darkness of that vergence? To be destroyed by it, as he said?

"...I've faced darkness before, what is different now?"

A pause. "...How would I know I'm ready, then?"

Sylvain instead asked of children. A legacy could be that. Descendents. Magara-sha had called her that as well, long ago. On Korriban. As had Lord Oshin. It was easy to get lost in such thoughts, easy to see connections everywhere. Stray words spoken here and there, a decade or more apart, somehow meaningfully connected here, now.

It was really reaching, though.

But the Emperor *could* have had children, she supposed.

[Dapper Dog]

The Snow Man got to his feet unsteadily and said, “Well if he had a wife is beyond me, but I think my time is at an end here. I can’t say when you will be ready, no one can. It’s a risk, always.”

He shuffled towards the vergence, leaning heavily on the walking stick speaking, “Peace is a lie, there is only passion; through Passion, I gain Strength; through Strength, I gain Power; through Power, I gain Victory; through victory, my chains are Broken, the Force shall free me.”

He hacked more blood on the frozen ground.

[Sylvain Torsin]

Sylvain nodded his head silently as he waited for Layne to make a sarcastic comment towards the blood-hacking old man.

The night had been quite the ordeal... but they had something to go on... often knowing the next step was all that mattered. Stepping back in here wasn't the most appealing step, but when had something of value never extracted a price...

Sylvain steeled himself to be ready for whatever came next... After he made sure his daughter and friends were still alive...

----


D2 EM Discipline to Restore Strain: 3eP+1eA 3 successes, 3 advantage, 1 Triumph


Recovering Strain. Get 3 back plus whatever boon a Triumph would offer...

[Layne Hoshin]

The Sith code. Was he saying that's what she had to embrace again? To find the means... to set things right? To be able to step back in that darkness and come back out with the strength or knowledge they needed?

The Sith of the empire used that code to justify precisely the sorts of things she wanted to end. To think it could be used to both those ends was an irony that she could not shake the thought of. A dangerous way to think, she realized.

But not one without merit.

She already knew she could do whatever it took... but... she still had to think on this. And besides, she was too tired now.

Like Syl, she steeled herself for whatever the days might bring...

...and found herself growing more determined already.

Discipline For Strain: 1eP+2eA 6 successes


(6 strain healed)

[Dapper Dog]

Spindral stepped into the vergence, and his tattered robes began to fray and fall apart, then his flesh and soon he was nothing but dust on the frozen ground.

Only his walking stick survived, laying on the ground as a marker of his final moments.

[Sylvain Torsin]

Sylvain looked briefly at Layne... and then stepped forward to pick up Spindral's staff.

He then turned back to her, "Can't hurt with all the walking ahead of us..."

[Layne Hoshin]

She looked on with... a feeling she couldn't quite describe. "Do you think he's really gone?"

It was hard to tell, after all. The old man had thought he was still on Korriban. He was old, powerful, *weird*. He might've just been projecting his presence here somehow, and now was simply back where he had started, in some bleak cave in the desert. Or, he really had decided to become one with the darkness, one last act of madness.

Layne knelt down, picking up a handful of the dust, letting it flow through her fingers as if to see whether it was real.

"Yeah, sure, you've probably forgotten how to use a lightsaber anyway, a stick is safer for you to get back into practice with."

Granted, that stick probably had some power or significance to it, if it was owned by Spindral and had remained behind.