The Formeri Incident

Posted on Sun May 1st, 2022 @ 1:28pm by Zam Kessar & Bomoor Thort & Rynseh Lahan

3,530 words; about a 18 minute read

Chapter: Chapter VI: The Last Bastion
Location: Lucazec, Outer Rim Alliance
Timeline: Early Week Four

OLD

Serus disengaged his lightsaber as he watched Rift Master Formeri coming to terms with her impending death, his expression largely unreadable, eyes examining her carefully. "The holocron will be claimed by its heirs," he reiterated to her, his voice little more than a whisper.

Formeri jolted slightly as her diaphragm attempted to cough, managing only a raspy wheeze. Her eyes drifted downwards, catching the faint silhouette of the man's Nautolan apprentice limping up to his side and gazing down upon her dying form. The old Rodian's thoughts drifted away from the dark hillside and she sensed the presence of the young student she had been unable to save so long ago. She felt his embrace, neither forgiving nor vengeful, but just a guiding hand out of this world and into that ethereal realm of the Force.

She drooped, allowing the strength of the old root to hold her full body weight and, as the sensation of the cold rain began to fade, allowed death to take her.

Amare's head was ringing with pain, her vision disoriented, but gradually regaining its stability as she wordlessly looked down at Formeri's corpse as twin streams of blood flowed from her nostrils. Once more, the Force had given her a glimpse of someone's greatest regret or fear, and as before, Amare had used it to her advantage, but this time, it gave her tremendous pause.

A master who failed her apprentice..., Amare pondered as she glanced up at Serus with intent to try to read Serus' final assessment of the battle's outcome. She wondered if he was going to fail her someday, or if she was doomed to fail her own apprentice if it was her destiny to triumph over Serus. Perhaps it didn't matter either way, for tomorrow had not yet been born, and today was a long-overdue day of victory for the Sith Order.

NEW

A gentle rainfall accented the mood of the setting perfectly. Dark clouds moved quickly overhead, blotting out a grey sky that swirled with foreboding intent, making it clear that the beautiful plains, hills and farmland below would remain subject to this weather for some time to come yet. Thunder rumbled quietly in the far distance, prompting the last of the few grazing beasts in the field below to seek shelter with one another, safe from the natural assault.

A lone figure stood upon the hillock, stood stoically beneath a gnarled tree, its ancient branches swaying gently in the wind, its pink leaves clutching tightly to their source. His broad frame was covered in a leather robe, its hood covering his blue-skinned form and protecting him from the downpour. His hands were deep within the robe's outer pockets, and dark void-like eyes examined the scene before him.

The tree was damaged and twisted, a mangled mess of the beautiful form it must have once boasted. Numerous branches had been broken, sliced cleanly and precisely at numerous points, and the bark of its trunk was scorched, as if lightning had struck it at various peculiar angles. Most unnaturally, a number of its thick roots were torn from the ground, with one in particular jutting sharply outwards, like a wooden spear.

The state of the aged tree fit with the scene around it; stones of various sizes were strewn about haphazardly, as if torn from the ground and flung with reckless abandon. Many of these also bore the same precise, clean cuts as the branches. Great clumps of earth had been dragged up and cast about, too, and electrical scorch marks, like those staining the tree, were visible at numerous points, making it clear that no natural arcs of lightning had caused the damage and disarray all around.

The figure stepped forward and placed a small device upon the ground. A second later, it lit up and projected a shimmering, blue holographic display of another person - a female Rodian, slumped and lifeless, impaled upon the exposed, spiked root. The large Nautolan knelt down to peer at the artificial avatar of the deceased woman. Even through the holographic projection, stuttering as it was from the rain, the faded emerald of her blood could be seen staining the root.

A pained exhale from behind made the Nautolan turn towards the other figure slowly approaching the scene of the Rodian’s death. The green-skinned Mirialan woman that grew nearer had her cloak tightly wrapped over her shiny black hair, holding the fabric close to prevent the rising wind from wrenching it away. Her deep blue eyes peered down at the hologram and she bared her teeth slightly on one side as he appeared to contain some level of disgust.

“What a barbaric waste of life,” the soft but precise voice of Reborn Jedi Master Ciera Olus spoke to the man before her, “No matter her transgressions or subterfuge, Ise-Kai deserved better than this.”

The Nautolan turned away from the newcomer once more, and did not yet rise. Instead, he continued to inspect the holographic display of the defeated Rodian.

"Master Formeri - Rift Guardian Formeri - was the best of us all, Ciera Olus," he said in a rumbling voice, the echoes of the tragedy that had taken place on this hill rippling through them both within the Force. Finally, he rose, his full height towering over the slight Mirilian Jedi, "and did what she had to, because of the worst of you. Because of the transgressions of the so-called Reborn."

Zam Kessar's black eyes looked knowingly down at Olus. There was a fierce defiance to his manner and tone, but there was no true hostility - just the fire that burned within a man that had fought wars for his beliefs, against even those he considered his masters, apprentices and friends. The Commander of the Rift Jedi had lost none of that intensity in the years since the war between the Alliance and the Republic, although his usual sense of humour had been lost to this grim occasion.

"But you were not invited here to debate Jundal's book-burning ways," Kessar then added, taking a step round to stand beside the Jedi Council's representative. "You are one of the very few of your kind to set foot on Outer Rim Alliance soil since the Belsmuth-Quelii Treaty was signed - or so I presume." He gestured towards the hologram with the final comment.

The robed Mirialan shuffled uncomfortably, either from the cold wind or the more chilling inference she was resisting rising to.

“Quite right to bring us back on topic, Kessar,” she omitted his Rift Jedi title as she spoke, “It is certainly an unconventional occurrence that brings us together like this after so many years. The Reborn Council hopes that this extension of cooperation will allow us to better understand this common enemy and to clear up any misunderstandings about this falsified Holocron that was returned to us.”

Initially, Kessar just grunted in reply, and let a few moments of the sound of rain falling fill the silence between them. "That was obviously not us - whoever sought the Telos Holocron had no knowledge of Ise-Kal's ploy or ongoing guardianship of that relic. She foresaw it would be a Reborn that would uncover the fake - before seeking to destroy the knowledge and warnings within. She wanted to preserve it, for a future where the Jedi are one and free of fear. Free of the darkness that forced our divide. A future where we understand the worst in us and embrace the best."

For a second, the Nautolan reached forward to deactivate the hologram, but then thought better of it, leaving the poignant image before them.

Kessar then sighed. "Only Guardian Formeri, the First Guardian and I knew of the holocron's hiding place, here on Lucazec. Not even the Rift Assembly had been consulted. To my shame, I accepted the risks associated with Sidious' artefact. It had to be hidden until the time was right, or to be passed to another protector. Whoever did this was powerful - and was not of our ranks or people."

Once again, Olus rippled as she seemingly pitted her compassionate side against her less polite urges, “Apologies, but am I right in taking from that, that you knew about the holocron having been taken from the temple vault? Knowingly exposed the galaxy to the darkness of that Sith artefact?”

She took a couple of paces away, looking down at the peaceful town below before turning back to Kessar, “I have no words for the level of recklessness that represents. No wonder you hide it even from your own and for what: some fallacy about learning from the darkness in order to conquer it? That’s how it starts every time.”

She added more softly, almost self-pitying, “Now it is happening again.”

Kessar scowled and seemed to forget some of the aforementioned shame at Olus' rebuke, the expression looking surprisingly menacing on his grizzled, thick Nautoan features. "If repression and denial were not the mainstays of your master's approach to tutelage, your students might be less likely to gorge themselves on every stray hint of knowledge they stumble across!"

Some of the self-righteous indignation that was known to typify Grand Master Quellus' former apprentice's behaviour was bubbling over. Kessar had now turned his sizeable frame to directly face Olus, his head angled down towards hers, his jaw clenched tightly. "Censorship is an organisation's lack of faith in itself. It is the hallmark of a tyrant." Getting a handle on his frustration once more, with a low exhale, he looked back to the facsimile of the fallen Rodian again. "This goes beyond blame for any individual, except for the one who did this." As he wiped away some of the rain that had found its way onto his rubbery face, Kessar looked to Olus. "The one who broke into the High Temple - or was already there?"

There was a quiet insinuation behind the last comment, but Kessar did well in framing it with as little blame or accusation as possible. Despite the simmering conflict that seemed doomed to typify every interaction between the Reborn and Rift Jedi, there was at least a common purpose in finding the ultimate good for the people they had sworn to protect.

Ciera held his gaze for a moment, her blue irises meeting his own dark aquatic equivalents. After a moment, she turned away and moved over to the crippled tree, running a hand along the roots that now burst forth from the ground.

“Darkness tempts each and every one of us, even those who follow the path of the Reborn,” she spoke, still in a mournful tone, “We seek to keep temptation out of the path of those with weaker disposition so that they may never feel its sting. We acknowledge when we fail and always seek to correct those mistakes.”

She looked over to where Master Rynseh, who had accompanied her here, knelt, examining some of the hurled boulders further down the hillside, “Some of us have to make the toughest choices to keep those we care for from straying further from the path. Tyrants care only for themselves, but the council’s authority is guided by compassion.”

She turned back and shook her head slightly before rustling through her cloak to provide a small holoprojector. With a click, she displayed her own hologram displaying a masked figure, his body obscured by not just a dark cloak but a heavy static distortion on the recording.

“This recording was delivered alongside the false holocron,” she gestured for Kessar to look closely, “It’s been heavily garbled beyond identification, but this would appear to be our culprit."

"You could not change history, but you could get it right to start with," the menacing, twisted voice began, the mouth it originated from entirely obscured by the metallic facade covering it. "You could have done something different. You had the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of our forebears - to make a difference to the galaxy, to make use of the remarkable power that comes to us so naturally... to shepherd the masses that fall blindly on one another, in their pursuit of the trivial."

Kessar's steely gaze flicked briefly to Olus, a brown rising in curiosity at this robed figure's odd vernacular and commentary, but he did not say anything, as the recording continued.

"You have spent so much time and given so many lives paying attention to what you think you are running from, that you can no longer see what you are running to – of where you are leading to.

"You believe your truths because they have been so for generations, because it is tradition. Because it is your law. It is nothing but Waay’s and Quellus’ dogmatised myths.

"This broken age of the Reborn is ending. Your deceits and manipulation will end. Your monopolies will die.

"New orders are rising.

The holocron will be recovered."

There was a punctuated silence as the recording concluded and the hooded figure dissolved back into the device. There was no need for discussion on the examination of the device itself or any other markers that could help identify its origins - the Reborn would have undertaken every option available to them before even considering sharing its contents with Kessar and the Rift Jedi.

The Nautolan commander had crossed his thick arms during the masked figure's twisted philosophizing and he maintained that pose now, as he looked back to the image of Formeri's corpse.

"A Dark Jedi," Kessar finally said, scowling. "A Dark Jedi with lofty ambitions that fancies himself a politico. One that, admittedly, has proven quite capable of working against your Shadows and securities - and with the resources to locate Ise-Kai." The first flash of lightning of the rainfall suddenly lit up the scene and the dismayed faces of the gathered Jedi, as well as offering a brief ethereal luminescence to Kessar's bulbous aquatic eyes. "You have had no dealings with this masked figure before?"

“The council has certainly never had any ‘dealings’ with Dark Jedi,” Olus seemed slightly concerned at the manner of question, “But the Order has always quietly kept the threat of the dark side at bay. This is why Master Rynseh has accompanied me; it is his speciality and he has assured me that this particular figure has not surfaced in his records before now.”

She placed the holoprojector back into her robe and proceeded to wrap the garment around her more tightly once again, “As for his ability to infiltrate the temple, we understand from various witnesses that he had an accomplice in this task: a blue-skinned Nautolan…”

She paused, her eyes catching his once more with a flash of concern, “A young female Nautolan masquerading as a padawan. She spoke to several individuals before the incident but was unaccounted for afterwards. There was a witness of sorts found within the vault, but his mind had been twisted and we could extract only enough to confirm it was this young woman who had broken in.”

The revelation and details actually broke down any facade Kessar was maintaining, as genuine worry and concern creased his features heavily. "It has been an age since any true darksider made their way into the Temple so successfully, let alone the hidden archives!" He shook his head in frustration and anger, although it was not directed at anyone present, and he stomped some feet away, to look across the rain-strewn hills below and in the distance, kissed as they were by dark clouds on the horizon.

"Is this everything; do you have no idea of who this Nautolan invader might be, of where she comes from?" He looked back over his thick shoulder. "No disgruntled former padawans or Jedi - no-one that has left the Order? Families? Founders of sects or cults?" Even as he asked the question, he knew that the final two would not truly be permitted. Quellus and his supporters would have ended such threats as soon as they were discovered, and Kessar let a weary eye wash over Rynseh as he mulled on that final thought.

Olus took a couple of smaller paces in the Rift Jedi leader’s direction, cautious as she answered, “We have, of course, already considered several Nautolan candidates who fit the description, or could have readily disguised themselves as such, all with some known or suspected level of Force sensitivity.”

She counted several examples out with her olive-hued fingers: “One is a bounty hunter who sometimes does contract work for various crime syndicates, another is a member of a dark side cult we are monitoring and, perhaps most disturbing if true, a former member of our temple guard who Master Rynseh believes has now turned to the dark side."

"I think those three suspects can be ruled out," Rynseh said to the two other Jedi as he rose to his feet, his height, girth, and age surpassing even Commander Kessar's considerable frame. Having concluded his detective work, he rubbed his hands together to dust off the dirt from his palms and then pointed with a clawed finger to a specific spec of ground where he determined some of the fighting took place. "A disturbing echo in the Force drew my attention there. Intense dark energy manifested right around that spot along with the presence of three distinct foot patterns: one set matches Formeri's; another is larger, possibly our 'friendly neighborhood' Dark Jedi; and another set a touch larger in size to Formeri, but still smaller than the second set here, here, and there."

He glanced and gestured to the distance and added, "The latter two stretch beyond these grounds extending out to the west." He turned and fixed his narrow-eyed focus upon Kessar, "Unless our masked deviant was of master-calibre in using the Force, it is unlikely he bested Formeri with a bounty hunter. She knew how to counter all the dishonourable tricks of the bounty hunting trade, perhaps better than any of us here. The cultist I encountered personally on Korriban recently; an arrogant female who would have mostly likely assaulted this place with greater numbers against a Jedi Master and much too clumsy in her use of the Force to stage a smooth and surgical infiltration. Further, her skin was a faded green. You were not far off when you mentioned that former guard of our Temple. She was my apprentice once, a blue-toned Nautolan named Zenarrah Sozo, and I know these patterns do not match her feet size or preference of footwear. The echoes in the Force around us do not ring true to her abilities, either. She was also never informed of the Sith holocron in our archive. Not even I knew about it until my appointment to the Council recently. However, Zen did produce a daughter in violation of Temple edicts. That daughter is now a young adult and was known to us as being quite gifted in the Force."

Kessar's eyes widened in concern at the revelations, absorbing the information the burly Cathar revealed with his usual intense expression. It was hard to fault the deductions of the Jedi Master - the Rift's own investigators and technicians had concluded similarly, at least in terms of the number and sizing of the participants in the deadly conflict, but everything else was new - and intriguing.

He held back from making any barbed comments about Quellus' less-than-holy order, or the ironies of Master Lahan's revealed truths.

"Of course," Olus then added, "if your own records can turn up additional leads, it is vital that you share them with us so that we can most effectively hunt down and eliminate those who would brazenly threaten the peace we both seek to defend.”

"Yes. Yes, of course," Kessar agreed readily, nodding deeply, and actually pleased to have his attention drawn away from the troubling Rynseh. There was no tone of defiance and no hint of frustration in the accession; the two were unified on this point - there was no doubting the danger and darkness in this threat, which went far beyond ideology. "I will ensure that the Alliance-Rift intelligence agencies incorporate the highest level of information sharing." A slightly sad smile now seemed to crease his lips. "We are allies, after all. One Republic, eh?"

The note of sorrow in his tone was echoed in Olus’ eyes as she dropped the hostility she had been holding onto for a moment, “I… I hope so Zam.”

She glanced over at Rynseh who was now examining the roots of the great tree where the projection of Formeri’s lifeless body still slowly flickered like a dying candle, “After all, some day we will all be one with the Force."

"In that, there is comfort for our fallen friend." Kessar reached out with his device, thumbed it heavily, and the image of the murdered Rodian finally disappeared, leaving the tattered husk of the tree and its mangled roots left soaking in the increasing downpour, cold and damp. "The dark side will find no such solace."

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