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Who: Darth Imperius (Talwyn Kallig) and YOU
What: Imperius arrives at the Trench and wanders about
When: Month of May
Where: Various locations

Content Warning: Talk of unethical use of the Force, including mind probes.

Arrival
Talwyn wonders if this is what it feels like to be a Nautolan. Or a Mon Calamari. He flails about the ocean in squid form for a while, but once he washes ashore he's back to being a Sith pureblood. Yellow eyes take in his surroundings, fingers brushing long, wet hair away from his face. What happened to his hair tie?

"Khem? Andronikos? ...Xalek?"

He must be really desperate if he's asking for Xalek.

The Boardwalk
Once the unpleasantness with the food and drink passes, Talwyn makes his way along the boardwalk to explore. He brings along a cup of water, just so he can have something to occupy his hands, and that he can sip on without his hair turning green again.

He can also be heard murmuring the Sith code under his breath, in order to ground himself. "Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion I gain strength..."

Odd End
Talwyn's wanderings eventually take him to the little shop of Odd End. He doesn't have any credits on him, but he can always window shop for now, and think about stuff he'd like to buy once he does get some money.

As he browses the aisles, he stops in front of a shelf containing crystals. Having something of an interest in crystals, even the non-kyber kind, he pauses to look, focusing on a few rather pretty purple ones.

Wildcard
[OOC: Feel free to ask for a prompt or write your own. Also, anyone who wants to continue threads from the test drive meme is welcome to do so]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

It's really the 'Imperious' part, most of all, that he's suppressing a reaction to. Should he take that as a mission statement? If so, worrying.

But he'll keep being polite as long as Talwyn is. "...Yes. But only because there was a Darth Nox here for a while, and we discussed a little what was, for him, recent history. We decided that, from my perspective, that was probably, like...4000 years in the past?" he offers. "The era of the Old Republic and the Sith Empire."

Edited (typo) 2022-05-06 23:02 (UTC)

Talwyn's not familiar with this Darth Nox, but there's a lot of Sith Lords in the Empire and he can't be expected to have met them all. Yellow eyes widen. "4000 years?"

Satele, Malgus, the Sacking of Coruscant, all ancient history to someone like Ezra. Yet he only knew about them because another Sith from his own era had been here once. To Talwyn, that says that the galaxy has very bad historians, and archeologists need to look further back in their explorations.

"The Sith Empire's not around anymore in your time?"

Well, part of Ezra's ignorance is he's playing catch up with his own lack of formal education.

"Well." Ezra rubs the back of his neck, trying to figure out where to start with the history he does know. "Not the same, uh, political entity, no." That's the right term, he thinks.

"About a thousand years before I was born, a series of wars involving the Sith ended. It was widely believed the Sith had been wiped out. A reformed Republic governed the Core and swaths of the Rim for about a thousand years. The Jedi Order served as peacekeepers, diplomats, aid on mercy missions. But the truth is the Sith operated in secret-"

He pauses, a thought occurring to him. "Is the Rule of Two a thing, in your time? A version of it?"

It's a little discouraging to know that the Empire he knows eventually falls, though given that Ezra called the Republic 'the Old Republic' implies that it falls at some point too. He tells himself that Empires fall all the time, but part of him worries that it's because of the constant infighting and rigidity that did his Empire in.

Talwyn shakes his head, taking a sip of water. "I'm not familiar with this Rule of Two, no."

Huh. Interesting.

"Always two Sith - one master, one apprentice, is how it was explained to me. How the Sith stayed hidden for a 1000 years. Even from the Jedi Order."

"Well, I suppose keeping your numbers down like that is an efficient way to hide. On the other hand, that doesn't seem very practical in the long term, because if both master and apprentice die, then there go the Sith."

Talwyn can't imagine a galaxy with only two Sith. He'd had to compete with multiple candidates just for the opportunity to become an apprentice, and one couldn't go two feet on Korriban or Dromund Kaas without running into a Sith.

If only it had worked that way, Ezra thinks to himself.

"I've wondered about that too," Ezra is what he says, agreeably. "And it makes me wonder how many back up apprentices and acolytes there were through the centuries."

"There would have to be. And the apprentice could have their own apprentice that their master doesn't know about." Talwyn muses. "And there's also the chance that Sith writings could be left behind for someone to find and take to heart, restarting the Sith once more."

No matter how much the Jedi tried to erase their existence, the Sith were tricky. This rule of two proved that. The Sith have also been known to cheat and bend their own rules. No matter how much the Jedi tried to wipe them out, the Sith would find a way to survive.

"My own master had multiple apprentices. And like her, I too had more than one."

Ezra eyes him with open curiosity. "Like, at the same time? Or, um-" What was the word? "Consecutively?"

It's not a new concept, to him. Before he arrived in Trench, he'd been somewhere else, with several young Jedi, and only one master to divide his time between them. But that was special circumstances.

"At the same time. When my master... was unable to carry on her duties, her other two apprentices chose to serve me, since I was now officially a Sith Lord." Perhaps it should be weird that he's being so casual with a Jedi, but he's yet to sense outright hostility from Ezra.

"I also took on a Jedi as an apprentice. And no, I didn't trick her into going with me, or corrupt her with the dark side." Not that most Jedi of his era would see the difference between simply exchanging ideas and getting someone to go full Sith.

His voice takes on a genuinely sad tone. "My Sith apprentices were murdered by my rival's servant. With them gone, I sought a new Sith apprentice. Between him and the Jedi, that gave me a total of two."

The padawan just goes quiet for a moment because that was...a lot of information. Assuming he can trust any of it, of course. But even if it's just a story, what a strange lie to tell.

"Why would you want to teach a Jedi, if it's not about the dark side? Why would they want you to be their teacher, if not to learn Sith ways?" he asks, brow furrowed in confusion.

Ok, so he hadn't been thinking in such simplistic terms when he first came across Maul. But his options for teacher in the ways of the Force had been extremely limited, and it hadn't taken him long to work out that he didn't actually want Maul to be master, instead of Kanan.

"She felt dissatisfied with the Jedi," His advisors had urged him to manipulate her, but he'd been honest with her. "She had something that I needed and came to her in peace. Then there was an incident with her masters and I was forced to kill them. She felt that she couldn't go back to the Jedi after that, so I made her an offer and she took it."

He had tried to avoid any messy situations and complications. Perhaps that was naive of him. Jedi didn't trust Sith.

"She still called herself a Jedi while she was with me. I merely showed her that things aren't so black and white, and that she could still follow the light side with more freedom than the Jedi doctrine gave her."

Talwyn doesn't always have a high opinion of the Jedi Order.

Well, that all sounds incredibly shady.

"Forced to kill her masters," he echoes, flatly. "And she didn't feel like she could back to her family, because of something you did?"

"I gave them the option to stand down, and they refused." As far as he's concerned, they all could have walked away from that situation and just given him what he wanted. "I also had every opportunity to trick her into falling to the dark side. It might have even saved me a lot of trouble if I had. Yet I refrained from doing so."

That, of course, makes him wonder what this guy had been doing that multiple Jedi believed they needed to use lethal force, to stop.

He raises his gloved hands in a 'whatever' gesture. "Look, I don't care what you call yourself, or believe, as long as you can co-exist with the rest of us living here fairly peaceably."

"So long as you don't give me a reason to defend myself, then I think we can learn to get along," Talwyn replies, taking the last few sips from his cup of water.

Edited 2022-05-17 00:56 (UTC)

"Good," Ezra says firmly. "I think we're on the same page, then."

Assuming that he can take anything Talwyn says at face value. But he's willing to cautiously trust, until he has evidence otherwise.

"And since you are new here, and I'm here to help new Sleepers - questions? Something else I can help with?"

"I might have a few," Talwyn is nothing if not inquisitive. Whether the boy can answer them or not is another matter. "I don't suppose you know what happened to this world to make it like this? I see signs of civilization, but it's like a natural disaster swept through."

Or an attack. It almost reminds him of Taris, only with more oceans and less rakghouls. That last part is fine with him, since he doesn't like rakghouls very much.

"I also don't suppose you know where a man can get some new clothing. Not sure how long I can go around in the same black robe before it starts to fall apart."

He nods. "I know a couple of places where you get some more clothing made. Michael runs The Garb Place, and he made these," he says, gesturing to his blue, green, and orange tunics. "He's got some reality altering abilities, so you can go pretty wild."

"And Miss Alayne Stone-" Although he swears he's seen people calling her something else on the network, but that's not business. "Runs a shop called The Rookery. She works by hand, I think, and tends to favor darker colors and fine embroidery, from what I've seen of her work."

"As for what happened here-" He takes a deep breath. "My understanding is a very, very powerful being with reality altering abilities died, and it changed the rules of how this world worked. There's some stuff about it in the Archives at the School of Gaze. And if you want first-hand accounts of Sodder - that being - you can ask Sleepers if they were part of The Dream. I wasn't here for any of that."

"Much appreciated. I'll be sure to give those places a visit." And bring some style back into his wardrobe. Talwyn is of the belief that the Sith have a better sense of style than the Jedi, since all the best fashion designers must have gone over to the Empire. Though he has to admit that Ezra's outfit is much less drab than what he usually sees Jedi wearing, which is a testament to these tailors he mentioned.

"And I'll be sure to visit these archives too. Believe it or not, but research and history was part of my sphere on the Dark Council, so this is right up my alley."

Ezra raises an eyebrow. "I'm guessing the Dark Council serves roughly equivalent function of the High Council of the Jedi Order?"

Then he shakes his head, touching his fingers to his lips thoughtfully. "Or, wait, do they make policy for the entire Empire, not just the Sith? Never mind. A whole bunch of Sith, in some sort of organized body? Nah, not surprised that there are specialists, including researchers and archivists."

He has, in fact (in between everything else) been thinking pretty hard about what it takes to form an order of force users, for the last year or so.

"The Dark Council help run the entire Empire. Though, I should say it's more accurate to say that we fully run the Empire. The Emperor is rather reclusive," In fact, there are those who doubt the Emperor is even still alive, with how little he's been seen lately.

"Even before my ascension, I was always looking for artifacts. My master would send me to find them, and then when she was gone, I searched for them of my own accord." Had things gone differently, he could have been a Sith archeologist.

Ezra files that information about Sith Empire of old away. He can't imagine how that makes for a good form of government, but that Empire had lasted for quite a while, hadn't it? It couldn't have all been rule by terror and brute force, right?

"Well, Arcane Scholars are a respected profession, here. Sounds like you'd fit right in, with them."

"That's good to hear. Sometimes scholarly pursuits aren't given the respect they deserve," He's met his share of Sith and ordinary citizens who prefer action to looking over tomes and relics. "In my experience, knowledge can be just as useful as swinging your lightsaber."

"I'm not really a scholar," Ezra says with an awkward shrug. His past as a street kid who didn't go to school makes it hard for him to think of himself in those terms.

"But that's my experience, too."

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