Storytime

Posted on Sun Dec 28th, 2025 @ 7:58pm by Bomoor Thort & Thane & Amare

2,739 words; about a 14 minute read

Chapter: Chapter VIII: Broken Chains
Location: Red Raptor
Timeline: Day Two (Two Months After Bespin)

OLD

New Alderaan was no longer a possibility in his mind. It was a near certainty.

Axion had been there - he was sure of it.

And if the fable was true - if it had ever been true - then whatever bargain had been struck was still being honoured or collected.

He straightened slowly, fatigue settling deeper into his bones, no effort made at rejuvenation within the Force, and began gathering the datapads into something resembling order.

Soon, he would put the mask back on. Soon, he would return to the holocron and to Plagueis’ cold, probing questions. Soon, he would act as a Sith.

But for now, in the quiet of his cabin, surrounded by ancient lies and modern truths, Thane allowed himself the smallest, most dangerous indulgence.

Certainty.

They were close.

NEW

The Red Raptor was quieter than it had been for a time.

It was hardly empty, but it had settled into one of those rare interludes where everyone had found a rhythm that did not require conversation. Rex and Mentis were light-years away by now, somewhere beneath Tatooine’s twin suns, chasing something from Rex's past that had meant little to Thane, in particular. Reave, for his part, was nowhere visible and everywhere audible; a faint metallic scrape through the vents, the hiss of a seal pressurising, the occasional muttered curse drifting through the bulkheads as he worried at his armoury like a patient predator.

Thane used the quiet while it lasted.

He had claimed a space in the galley, spreading his materials out across the table with deliberate care. Two datapads lay side by side, their screens angled so they could be read together. Between them, incongruously out of place amid the ship’s utilitarian lines, rested a thin, physical volume - Alderaanian, old enough that its pages had yellowed despite careful preservation.

Over at the kitchenette, Bomoor had taken a break from his work in the armoury to prepare a small bowl of noodles and greens. While he spooned them into his mouth, his other hand holding his own datapad, which he slowly flicked through, examining a series of old droid schematics he had downloaded.

Amare had taken a seat at the table with a large black and white metal tumbler with the logo of one of Bastion's elite infantry units engraved on it. It was filled with a protein-laced concoction that smelled vaguely of fish and pungent herbs that she contentedly indulged in. She was dressed very casually with a midriff-revealing deep purple tube top and loose black workout pants, prepared for another day of rigorous training.

“I want you to look at these together,” Thane said at last, breaking the silence. His voice was calm, but there was a tension beneath it, the kind that came from long hours without rest rather than excitement. He reached out and tapped the first datapad, then the second. “Not as a story and a translation. As a comparison.”

He slid the book slightly forward, turning it so they could see the title rendered in careful, archaic script.

Þe Starwyrd Bargayn.

“This,” Thane continued, “is Middle Alderaanian. Two, maybe three, hundred years old by the dating I could assess. A children’s fable, officially. House lore, unofficially. It has been bothering me.”

Bomoor's fingers followed the delicate curves of the dated script as though re-writing it in the air before looking at his friend quizzically.

"What makes this one stand out to you above the rest?" the Ithorian asked.

“It's too precise,” Thane stated. He keyed the second datapad to life, scrolling until his own notes and translation filled the screen - handwritten annotations layered over clean Galactic Basic. “Fairytales usually aren’t. They blur. This doesn’t.”

He let Bomoor and Amare read in silence for a moment. The hum of the ship filled the space between them, broken only by a distant clang from somewhere in the ventilation shafts as Reave dropped something heavy and swore under his breath.

Thane leaned one hand against the table. “I used to think the Cult borrowed symbols. Reused myths. Took whatever language people already feared and wrapped Axion in it.” His eyes tracked a particular line on the Alderaanian page, unseeing now. “I don’t think that anymore.” He looked up. "I think this is the original.”

He gestured between the book and the datapad. “A ‘djinn’. A Starweird. A bargain framed as necessity. One taken so ten may be given. A noble house elevated by an unseen patron who asks only continuance.” His mouth tightened slightly. “It’s all there. Not distorted. Not embellished. Waiting.”

He let them read a bit more, ensuring they had seen the names and other comments before he continued. “I’ve checked everything I can without burning our cover,” the Caanan went on. “Trade anomalies. Marriage records. Political survivability curves. They don’t spike like this by chance. They persist.” He tapped the Alderaanian text again. “Just like the bargain says they should.”

"So..." Bomoor began, narrowing his eyes in thought as he pieced together Thane's research, "The contract with House Wyrd continues to this day. The cult is still influencing politics on New Alderaan to their favour? Why? What do they gain?"

Thane turned the datapad slightly, scrolling back to a set of figures Bomoor had already glanced over once, then thought better of dismissing. The light from the screen traced the fatigue in his face without softening it.

“They don’t gain control,” he said at last. “Not directly.” He tapped the screen once. “They gain continuity.”

He met Bomoor’s gaze, then Amare’s. “House Wyrd doesn’t need to rule New Alderaan. It doesn’t need to steer policy openly or push legislation through the Senate. It just needs to survive every correction. Every purge. Every reform.” Thane gestured back to the book. “Every time the galaxy tries to tidy itself.”

His thumb flicked, bringing up another series of annotations - dates running in careful parallel columns. “When trade routes collapse, Wyrd diversifies early. When marriages become liabilities, they dissolve cleanly or marry out-system. When public sentiment turns against old bloodlines, they withdraw." A pause, to let the others assess and review. "They don’t fight entropy,” he said. “They step aside and let it pass... The Cult doesn't even have to be visible. Not necessarily, and not in the way we’ve grown used to.”

Amare found Wyrd's flexibilities to be admirable, albeit a bit too heavy in prudence and lacking in ambition. She did, however, appreciate the need for survival and longevity. As someone who preferred the indirect approach to most things, she could see the wisdom in their ways and wondered if that's how she would run her own noble house if she had one.

There were a few more pregnant moments as Thane considered his next words carefully, of how he wanted to frame his deductions. “Mentis may still be right," he finally said. "There could be representatives - advisors, attachés who never quite leave. People whose role is simply to ensure the house remembers the shape of its obligations.” He drew up another note. “And as with Bespin, there’s a non-zero chance the local cult leader, or whatever the Void they call themselves, is anchored by something tangible. Another shard, maybe."

Thane’s expression hardened slightly. “Axion doesn’t need artefacts to exert influence, as far as I can tell, but he favours them. They focus belief. They make loyalty feel rewarded, and probably less demanding than whatever charming Force talents he typically relies on.” He closed the Alderaanian book with deliberate care. “If this Starwyrd is Axion, then the foundation was laid generations ago. What’s grown on top of it may be… adaptive.” He glanced briefly toward Amare, then back to Bomoor. “That could mean quiet stewardship. It could mean active devotion. Or it could mean something in between, like an observance mistaken for tradition.”

The ship hummed softly around them. “I expect the sacrifice still matters,” he continued quietly, subtly pushing aside a rogue thought around the childhood memory of his home being invaded by Axion. “Not because of what was taken - we’ll likely never know that - but because it taught the house how to think.” He straightened, fatigue settling deeper into his bones, making no attempt to draw on the Force to mask it. “Whether they worship Axion as a god, revere him as a patron, or simply fear the consequences of disobedience… the outcome is the same, and compliance becomes culture. It's insidious, and it must be happening in so many pockets of the galaxy, where we - and the Republic and Jedi - have been utterly blind to it. A shadow faith, almost perfectly concealed, only acting in small measures so as to avoid detection, or artfully concealed by sympathisers, allies or other cultists in power.”

New Alderaan was no longer a possibility in his mind. It was a near-certainty.

Bomoor set down his half-finished bowl and his own pad and took up Thane's datapad fully, flicking back to the supposed image of this 'djinn' and the glowing red jewel in his hands. As he drew the pad closer, the red hue from the screen danced across his eyes as they flicked this way and that on the page.

"There are too many crossed threads to ignore, I agree," his voice hummed in agreement, "It is clear that Axion likes to create numerous pockets of disciples: all ultimately devoted to him, but sharing slightly different versions of the mythos that is Axion himself. Diversifying and disbursing his followers is a key part to the immortality he has cultivated. We must not overlook any facet of his network if we wish to rob him of that immortality."

He plucked up his own datapad again and gestured it towards Thane's pad, while raising an eye stalk at his friend. Understanding the gesture, Thane waved silent permission and Bomoor began transferring some of the data across to his personal device.

"Then, I take it some further reconnaissance on House Wyrd is in order?" the Ithorian continued, his demeanour still light as it had recently returned to being as he found a renewed focus post-Bespin, "This might finally be the excuse I need to make contact with my father. New Alderaan and politics go together like the fine cheese and wine that flows from their estates."

Thane regarded Bomoor for a moment, weighing the Ithorian's determinations. He, himself, had certainly gone in a way Bomoor recognised by now - not withdrawn, and not contemplative in the Jedi sense, but decisive. For him, it was as if something had clicked into place and the only thing left was determining the cleanest way to move it into the world. And, now, he believed this was true for Bomoor, too.

Beyond the galley viewport, stars slid by in their indifferent procession. The Red Raptor’s engines thrummed at a steady register, a sound that had become so familiar it almost faded into the background - a reminder that this ship, for all its secrecy and storied past, was still moving through systems where names, titles, and histories mattered.

“Your father,” Thane said at last, quietly. It was not a question.

He turned the datapad back toward himself and closed it, fingers resting on the casing for a moment longer than necessary. “You know I spoke with Bruta after Öetrago,” he continued, matter-of-fact. “Before you were awake. I did not like to have a conversation without you present, of course...” He paused for a second, golden eyes examining the table, noticing imperfections without meaning to in the surface. “He was exactly as I expected him to be.”

Thane looked up then, meeting Bomoor’s gaze fully. There was approval, he realised - the rare kind that did not need to be stated outright, and he hoped his friend would not be patronised. “If you wish to speak to him now, I think it makes absolute sense.”

He gestured, not to the datapads this time, but outward, as if indicating the wider galaxy. “House Wyrd survives politically, it seems, from this bargain, learning to navigate the currents and trends of a world quite alien to us here.” His mouth tightened slightly. “If Axion has embedded himself there, then we cannot afford to approach it as outsiders.”

Thane straightened, the faint weariness in his posture making him seem older than his years. “Which means,” he said evenly, “that I cannot continue pretending to be one either.” The words settled into the space between them with quiet weight. “For a long time,” he went on, “it has been… useful for us to be errant Jedi and their motley crew. Ghosts of the Order. People the Republic does not quite know how to categorise.” His eyes flicked briefly to the Alderaanian book, still resting on the table. “That indulgence has run its course.”

He drew in a slow breath, steadying rather than fortifying himself with the Force. “If we are going to unpick bargains centuries in the making, then I think your instinct is right, my friend. We will need more than secrecy. We will need standing. Recognition. The kind that forces doors open rather than slipping through them.”

Thane’s gaze sharpened. “I am the prince of Caanus. Heir to House Verus. Those titles were never stripped from me - circumstances merely meant they were unclaimed, and maybe forgotten.” He thought to the vague awareness he had of the current political climate on his sleepy Outer Rim homeworld, of the glimpse he had of the planet when they had marched across the moon Vaa. Whilst he had accessed accounts, encountering little resistance, what he now proposed was to make a very clear claim to his ancestral titles. It would send a message that could not be withdrawn.

Inclining his head slightly toward Bomoor, Thane knew their minds aligned. “Speak to your father. Claim what you can and establish what you need to. Together, we can go as figures of noble standing, with young Zaracoda Wolph as a ward or debutante.”

Amare, indulging in her drink and quietly listening and thinking, spat some of her drink back in the tumbler before it snorted out through her nose.

"I'm sorry...what?" she said whilst wiping her lips with a napkin, nearly floored by the use of her legal name and the plan proposed.

The implication was clear. Whatever they intended to become next, it would no longer be something that could hide in the margins, even with their quiet alliances with Speaker Hul and Grand Moff Tarses.

Thane’s reaction was immediate and entirely unguarded. The sharp, briny stench had hit him an instant before the sound did, and he recoiled half a step on instinct alone, face tightening in open revulsion as Amare spluttered, coughing and snorting, the protein drink briefly waging war on her sinuses. His expression flickered through irritation into something colder, more visceral - not anger, but a deep, almost ancestral distaste. Fish had always repulsed him. The smell alone carried memories of damp docks, rot, and things pulled too long from the deep.

“Maker-” he muttered under his breath, turning his head sharply away as if the scent itself were an affront. He exhaled slowly through his nose, schooling his expression back into something controlled, though the crease between his brows lingered as Bomoor now spoke.

"Our connections are our strengths," the Ithorian had his eyes on Thane firmly, largely ignoring the spluttering Nautolan, "It has taken me far too long to realise that. Even a corrupted soul such as Axion knows to place value in people, even if he does not treat them as such. Let us enter his world from a position of strength and, it seems..."

He softened his eyes into an expression of amusement upon Amare as he watched her recovering ungracefully from her spit take, "One of civility."

With that, Thane, having suitably recovered, nodded in approval and deactivated the last datapad and drew it neatly back toward himself. “Then that’s enough for today,” he said quietly, with finality. “We have outlines. We have direction. And for once, we are not reacting.” He glanced between Bomoor and Amare in turn, something resolute setting behind his eyes. “The Raptor crew are coming to dinner."

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