DJK Kenath Zoron vs. DA Timeros Caesus Entar Arconae

Knight Kenath Zoron

Journeyman 4, Journeyman tier, Clan Taldryan
Male Human, Sith, Juggernaut
vs.

Dark Side Adept Timeros Caesus Entar Arconae

Elder 1, Elder tier, Clan Arcona
Male Human, Krath, Marauder
Comment

Gentlemen,

Thank you for participating in the Elite 8 of the ACC Fading Light Tournament. Congratulations on making it this far!

I have judged this match in favor of Timeros. Zoron, you performed fantastically throughout this tournament and your clean and clear writing was a welcome relief to read, but unfortunately you faced a buzz saw in Timeros this round.

I scored Timeros the winner in the story aspect of this battle because of his sophisticated ability to tell a story and set the environment and battle. Z, you did great, but Timeros just did better.

If either of you have additional questions concerning the score, please contact me.

Hall Fading Light
Messages 4 out of 4
Time Limit 3 Days
Battle Style Alternative Ending
Battle Status Judged
Combatants DJK Kenath Zoron, DA Timeros Caesus Entar Arconae
Winner DA Timeros Caesus Entar Arconae
Force Setting Standard
Weapon Setting Standard
DJK Kenath Zoron's Character Snapshot Snapshot
DA Timeros Caesus Entar Arconae's Character Snapshot Snapshot
Venue Begeren - Mass Grave
Last Post 26 July, 2014 9:09 PM UTC
Assigned Judge Mandalorian Declan Roark
Syntax - 15%
Timeros Caesus Entar Arconae General Kenath Zoron Ad Vizsla
Score: 5 Score: 4
Rationale: No major issues. Rationale: 1. Word choice: The other man disappeared from this sights in little more than a blur.
Story - 40%
Timeros Caesus Entar Arconae General Kenath Zoron Ad Vizsla
Score: 4 Score: 3
Rationale: 1. Ugh!: "cavalcade of bolts with pitiless surety." 2. Very nice work. Rationale: 1. Repetitive writing (again): Zoron began to panic again and he swept the rifle back and forth, trying to find the other man again. 2. Nice work. Clean and smooth writing.
Realism - 25%
Timeros Caesus Entar Arconae General Kenath Zoron Ad Vizsla
Score: 5 Score: 5
Rationale: No major issues Rationale: No major issues
Continuity - 20%
Timeros Caesus Entar Arconae General Kenath Zoron Ad Vizsla
Score: 5 Score: 5
Rationale: No major issues. Rationale: No major issues.
Timeros Caesus Entar Arconae's Score: 4.6 General Kenath Zoron Ad Vizsla's Score: 4.05
Posts

Begeren. Once a prosperous Sith world, it has been the site of numerous battles throughout the millennia. Grand halls and monuments were torn down and re-purposed by looting Republic forces thousands of years ago, before they were driven from the planet. Isolated settlements still dot the planet's surface, but the inhospitable, craggy, and desert-like terrain, along with the beasts common to many desert and Sith worlds, have kept most humanoids from colonizing. Occasional skirmishes have left debris scattered throughout the desert, and battles were fought here as recently as the Galactic Civil War.

The One Sith’s hold on Begeren is all but broken, though a few small pockets of resistance remain. The Clans and Houses of the Brotherhood now swarm the planet to defeat them, but attention has returned to plunder. Roaming bands of Jedi, adherents to light and dark alike, claim—or destroy—priceless artifacts at every turn. One of the few remaining untouched areas on the entire planet is the Valley of Monuments, so named for its glorious architecture. The valley is a patchwork collection of sand dunes and massive canyons, inhospitable even in the best of times. Despite this, the One Sith maintain control over the area. Exactly how—or why—this place has not yet been claimed by the Brotherhood, you do not know, and nor do your superiors, but you know it is ripe for the picking. Perhaps one reason is that access is limited—the One Sith maintain control over the valley’s entrances, save for a small handful of paths that tread directly through canyons used long ago as ancient burial grounds. Intelligence suggests these entrances are virtually undefended. Your plan, at the moment, is to find your way into the Valley of Monuments through one such canyon, and it is there you now find yourself.

Somehow, despite the windswept sand dunes mere meters away, the canyon before you remains virtually free of sand. Macabre hills fill this canyon, thousands of exposed skeletons laying atop one another, the sand dunes of most of the planet replaced by dunes of stark white bones. The dark side hangs thick in the air over this massive valley, flanked by four incredibly large crystals placed at each cardinal direction. This is one of a handful of ancient mass graves, the final resting place of literally thousands of slaves forced to give their lives millennia ago to create the massive monuments of Begeren. Far in the distance, massive Sith monuments rise before an impressive ancient palace, but your attention remains here, now, where the bones shift beneath your every step, crunching noisily. Ancient clubs, whips, and other weapons occasionally break through the bony landscape, testament to the vicious past of this place. To those that can even sense the most rudimentary of emotions through the Force, an even more sinister feeling permeates the air here: not only death, but suffering, anger, and hate.

The sun slowly creeps towards the mountains far beyond this impressive valley, casting long rays of light that reflect off many of the white bones littering the canyon. The heat here is oppressive, but the sun will depart soon, leaving you in cool darkness. You notice that the large crystal to the north, situated in the shadow of a large canyon wall, begins to shimmer a faint blue, causing the bones beneath it to take on a ghostly glow. You think you hear rustling of bones in the distance, and almost think you notice something movement, though it could just have been the wind. Your step hastens as you move quickly through the canyon, hoping to escape this place before sunset takes it, and reach areas with more valuable items to claim or destroy. But before you can make much progress, you begin to hear the telltale signs of another living being—the sound of footsteps crunching bones—and they are coming from just over one of the boney dunes that litter the area.

Zoron crouched low, trying to find some concealment from the source of the sounds, but there was nothing large enough to shield his bulk. Instead he focused his mind and put up a simple illusion; it wasn't fancy, and it wouldn't last long, but he hoped it would give him an element of surprise if he so needed it.

A thin, gaunt man crested a nearby bone dune and paused, looking around. Zoron saw an array of weapons on the man's belt: at least two blasters and one - no, two - lightsabers. Zoron watched and felt a trickle of fear pierce his thoughts. His illusion faltered and dropped, and the other man's gaze snapped to him. The trickle of fear ramped up to a full-on torrent.

A small voice in Zoron's mind tried to break through the terror, but the cold logic of it was unable to overcome the primal panic that was being pushed into Zoron's thoughts. He staggered to his feet, his legs shaking, and he ran.

Reaching the entrance path again, he found his mind had cleared. He tried to sort out what had just happened. Odd. I've seen bones before, I've seen men before. I'm not scared by those things normally. Sithspit! This place is full of Dark Side power and that man is obviously a Jedi. He's messing with my mind.

Zoron snarled, furious over being manipulated like an acolyte, and tried to formulate a plan to deal with the man. He couldn't sense the man anywhere nearby, but that didn't surprise him. The other man's Force signature would be obscured by the roiling Dark Side energy inside the canyon.

Zoron chose a different tactic, swinging his rifle up into his shoulder so that he could use its sights. He closed one eye and bent his mind to focus solely on the light coming through the sights of the rifle. Blocking out all other stimulus, he began slowly moving forward into the canyon again.

After retracing his steps back to where he had last seen the man, he felt nothing except small pressure against his temples. He knew someone was trying to manipulate him again, but his focus on the sights allowed him to keep it at bay, at least for now.

He crested the bone dune where the man had stood and began to scan the area. As he did, the pressure redoubled and he began to feel the fear seeping through again. He needed to find this man, and fast.

Finally, he saw him. He was a few dunes over, staring at him, unblinking. Zoron's finger tightened on the trigger and he began firing. The other man disappeared from this sights in little more than a blur. Zoron began to panic again and he swept the rifle back and forth, trying to find the other man again.

At the last second, he felt a familiar twinge in the Force. Knowing it meant danger, he dove to the side, just as a pair of blaster bolts flew through where he had been. Landing hard, he lost all focus on his rifle's sights and began to hyperventilate as the fear hammered at him again.

Zoron saw the other man posed at the top of the neighbouring dune, blasters tracking down toward him. That small voice from earlier tried breaking through the fear, and managed to scream MOVE! as the other man pulled the triggers again. His training kicked in and his body moved autonomously, relying on years of practice. He rolled down the dune, shielding his body from the line of sight by using the mass of bones.

As soon as he broke the line of sight, he felt the fear lessen. There was another sensation that replaced it though: pain. He'd been struck by at least one blaster shot in the rump. He began to focus the Force into healing himself, but paused as he realized that the pain was wiping out the latent effects of the fear. Knowing that he needed something to focus on instead of the fear the other man was causing, he opted to leave the blaster wound as an anchor for his mind.

Breathing carefully, he hopped awkwardly to his feet and readied himself to go back over the dune to confront the other man.

Timeros leaned against one of the jagged crystals, a shadowy outline against its wan blue glow. He had holstered his blasters, heedless of the fact that he was making a target of himself. His foe could fight, or flee, as he chose. The Entar had more important matters to attend.

The strong compel. The weak conform.

The thought came unbidden, a horror-wrought press into his mind backed by a thousand tormented souls. The Arconan could feel the dead, rustling with hatred. Every step on the sands reverberated against memories of death, pain and abuse. These had been people forced into bondage, serving beneath tyrants of all-consuming ambition and pitiless might. They had rendered to the Sith all they could, until only death and peace remained for them.

And then, their lords had taken that as well. Their callousness did little to shock the Arconae – the Sith Lords’ crimes differed from his own in scale alone. But the Adept found himself disgusted at the futility of it all – for all their vaunted tombs, the end had come for the Sith as surely as it had for their victims. In the end, in mass grave or sumptuous mausoleum, a corpse was still a corpse.

The warning came instants before the blaster bolt did, shattering the Entar’s reverie. He hurled himself straight up with prescient knowledge, forgetting his momentary distraction as fire impacted the crystal, dislodging fist-sized chunks of mineral from the enormous marking pillar. As he tumbled through the air, the final rays of sunlight slipped below the horizon and the other pillars came alight as well, their glow suffusing the nightly dark.

The second bolt came before Timeros’ feet touched the ground, but the Arconae was ready; his lightsaber unfurled with a sinister hiss, and he moved before the bolt came into range, batting the sizzling light into the sky.

He landed in a crouch, left hand clutching his blaster, saber ablaze in his right. Ahead, cast in the strange crystalline radiance, he could just make out the figure of his foe. The man was tall and athletic, with an outline of thick muscles set beneath Sith battle armor.

There were no words. They had no words to waste on each other. And so, as the combatants exploded into motion, the only noise in Timeros’ mind was the clamor of dead souls.

The strong prevail. The weak lament.

The Entar leveled his blaster instants before his enemy could do the same with his rifle, bleeding crimson fire into the air. Zoron jumped aside immediately, spraying wildly in return, before hitting the ground again. He came up into a crouch, then bolted across a series of low-set dunes, ducking behind cover and returning fire only sporadically, as if to fluster his Elder foe.

If that had been the Knight’s goal, he failed. The Entar remained implacable as he tracked the weaving Taldryanite, ignoring haphazard shots and unleashing a terrain-shredding cavalcade of bolts with pitiless surety. Volume succeeded where skill did not, and Zoron’s attack turned into a rout, forcing him to track a circuitous course across the dunes as Timeros’ fire turned sand and corpses to molten slag.

Come, now, the Arconae snarled inwardly as his enemy disappeared beneath the crest of yet another hill. He took measured steps of his own, remaining close to the crystalline spire and relying on supernal senses to seek his adversary’s location. The weak die here. Let me help them join you.

Then, Timeros heard a sudden crack, and several things became apparent to him at once.

First, the grave mark was irregularly shaped, and his pace around the spire had brought him beneath an overhanging section. Second, it was surprisingly brittle, losing chunks with every impact. Third, all of Zoron’s shots may have missed him, but they had steadily impacted the crystal. And one shot in particular, by skill or – more likely – luck, had just impacted right above his head.

The single, tremendous groan was the only warning he got, and as the epiphany struck the Arconae, a torso-sized chunk of crystal bore down onto him.

It was little more than luck that saved him then as he threw himself aside, careening maladroitly through the air and landing in a heap. Immediately, the Taldryanite stuck up his head, eyes gleaming with sudden opportunity hefting his blaster and firing.

Timeros shifted with supernal alacrity, raising his blade just in time and deflecting the bolt. Undeterred, the Knight squeezed the trigger again, ready to make the most of his opportunity and sending a stream of fire towards the fallen Elder.

A sudden yank at his hands deterred the Journeyman, forcing the blaster aside. Confusion broke through on his features, and he glanced aside – there, seemingly abandoned in the sands, he could see the vague outline of a discarded whip, cracked with age.

And, by dint of telekinetic might, it had wrapped itself around the rifle’s barrel, forcing fire away from the prone Arconae.

To his credit, Zoron reacted without surprise, dropping the weapon immediately and reaching for his blaster. He jumped up from behind the dune, running forward and firing, unintimidated by his adversary’s obvious power.

Poor fool.

With another exercise of power, Timeros seized the heavy crystal, hurling it at the sprinting Knight, shedding glowing splinters as it bowled across the gap. With a final effort of will, he hammered the crystal with his mind.

The crystal shattered, suddenly and violently, as bolts and telekinetic force combined, turning the shredded crystal into a lashing storm of splinters that sailed straight towards the hapless Taldryanite.

When the air cleared, Zoron was nowhere to be seen.

Groaning slightly, Timeros righted himself, searching the dunes for a sign of his foe, finding nothing.

The hunt it is, then.

He cast his presence about him like a searchlight, scanning the area as he advanced and trying, unsuccessfully, to ignore the dead slaves’ whispers.

The strong succumb. The weak are slaughtered.

“Ooph!” Zoron grunted as he tumbled down yet another of the bone mounds. He was covered in myriad cuts from the crystal shards, but he’d read the path of the main body of pieces and managed to avoid being turned into a red mush.

A sudden heat in his hand drew his eyes down to the blaster and he saw a large shard of crystal embedded in the power pack. Sithspit! He flung it away quickly, just as it overloaded. The explosion was small, but it would act like a beacon for the other Jedi.

He worked himself to his feet, noticing that the multitude of wounds had effectively cleansed his mind of the effects of the other Jedi’s manipulations. However, new presences were intruding in on his thoughts – the long-dead, yet still-lingering, spirits of the slaughtered slaves. While he’d noticed them earlier, they had grown more insistent after he’d shot the crystal.

As Zoron stood, the other Jedi crested the mound and locked his focus onto him. Zoron’s saber snapped to life. The other Jedi launched into a furious series of attacks, driving Zoron backwards. The other Jedi’s saber moved so fast. Zoron realized, too late, that he’d positioned himself in a poor spot and the other Jedi had exploited it. It didn’t help that the other Jedi was obviously a better duelist.

His foot slipped and that was the opening the other Jedi needed. A swift strike pierced his ribcage. He felt like he’d been hit in the chest with a hammer and he knew his lung had collapsed. He gasped for breath and couldn’t find anything.

The other Jedi drew back and watched him with that steely gaze. Zoron sunk to his knees and then keeled over onto the ground. Still the other Jedi stared, unblinking.

Darkness crept in at the edges of his vision and he began to see things appear around the other Jedi. Things that hadn’t been there seconds before. Things that just didn’t make sense to him.

He saw the other Jedi react to spectral spirits that had come up from the ground nearby. Grotesque bodies had been formed from mismatched bones and chunks of the broken crystal.

The other Jedi exploded into an awe-inspiring mix of saber slashes and waves of Force power, shattering and dismembering the guardian spirits.

Zoron slipped into the black, his last vision that of his opponent levelling an entire dune as he fought off the revenants.


Far away, a sensor was beeping wildly in the Taldryan forward base. A comms tech choked out a surprised squeak before turning to the single Sith in the room.

“Sir… Automated data feed from one of our Sith is showing serious medical distress! It’s showing as Knight Zoron. Standby for exact location…”

Aiden Dru leaned forward in his chair and awaited the result of the comms tech’s efforts.

“It shows as the location tagged as ‘Valley of Monuments.’ I can’t get anything except the most basic data from the feed, and it’s not good.” The entire control room was silent, waiting on orders.

Aiden Dru began to speak when he was interrupted by the comms tech again.

“Sir! Explosions detected. We can’t get visuals in from any of our sensors – there’s too much interference and debris in the area.”

Dru turned to the Special Forces Captain nearby. “Get him. Now.”


Zoron found his consciousness drifting, though he wasn’t sure if it was just the infamous white tunnel or if he was actually still alive.

He was sure he saw a Taldryan-marked assault shuttle flare above him as well as a team of heavily-armoured Darkfire troopers plummet to the ground, but he’d seen that so many times in his life that he dismissed it as an old memory re-surfacing as his life slipped away from him.


Again, Zoron drifted into an old memory, this time one of him being rushed down the sterile white halls of a medical bay.


Zoron felt like he was floating. As his consciousness receded again, he was certain he was finally dying and his thoughts turned to his wife and children before oblivion took him.


“Sir, we’ve got him stabilized and immersed in bacta. He’s in rough shape, but I’m optimistic that he’ll recover fully. He’ll have one hell of a scar, but I think he’ll be happy that’s all he got.” The doctor finished his report to Dru, who was accompanied by Lord Halcyon and Master Howlader.

“Excellent. Advise us if anything changes.” The three Sith held further comments to themselves until the doctor had moved away.

Halcyon looked at the other two Sith. “I’ve just finished reviewing the report from the Darkfire commander who recovered Zoron. I’ve forwarded it to you, but whoever he fought down there was powerful, nearly on par with Howie or myself. The area around where he was found was almost completely levelled. I’m not really sure how he survived, lightsaber wound notwithstanding.”

Howlader nodded and glanced back at Zoron’s floating shape. “I’ve seen the sat images from before and after – it’s a completely different location. Someone – or something – cut a swath through the valley from where he was recovered. Only two of those crystals are even still recognizable. We may have underestimated the opposition here.”

“I’ll be sure that I get a full report from Zoron when he comes out of the tube. We need to be ready for the next mission, and I suspect we haven’t seen the last of whoever did this to him.” While being the youngest in the conference, Aiden’s point was spot on.

Timeros skipped across the sands, his footfalls light and unencumbered despite the palpable weight of death still in the air. He was faintly aware that the crystal behind him had dimmed to a dull glow, nearly extinguished by the violence visited upon it, but the Adept paid it little heed.

Instead, he cast his mind widely, deflecting his supernal awareness off of sand and bone, scouring the graveyard to end his foe. Yet, while he could sense his prey’s presence, the raging maelstrom of dead voices interfered with his power, weaving through the area and scattering his awareness, making the Knight hard to pinpoint.

He came upon the shattered crystal with sure-footed certainty, saber ablaze and blaster long since holstered. It would do him little good in a close-quarters fight. The desert, of course, had been ripped to shreds, crystal beads embedded in the ground, gleaming with a rapidly-dying radiance. And, within that glow, he could see a deep furrow leading away, speckled with crimson as though a wounded animal had dragged itself from the wreckage.

And, a few yards further, he could just make out the sight of gloved fingers, flexing slightly around a blaster.

Timeros reacted without thought, contempt running through his mind. He hurtled himself across the dune, inhuman grace combining with Force-fueled prowess to crash down into the sands, saber bearing down to skewer his hapless foe.

Except that it didn’t, because Zoron wasn’t there.

The Adept realized his mistake instants before his feet touched the ground, burning an ugly scar through a long-forgotten corpse, its gloved hands flexing seemingly of their own accord around Zoron’s cast-off blaster and glove. The Entar had little time to contemplate his mistake, however. The Knight abandoned his telekinetic puppetry for a sudden, bloodcurdling howl, saber flaring alight as he emerging from a crouch only feet away from his foe.

It was, all in all, a well-sprung trap. There was no time to parry Zoron’s attack. Not with the Taldryanite this close and moving this aggressively. Nor was there any chance to dodge Simple physics prohibited it.

And yet, Timeros did it anyway, falling to his knees in a gravity-defying drop, seemingly oblivious to his impending skewering. With desperate brilliance, he mentally tugged at the hem of his robes, gripping them tightly and pulling himself further down, flattening into a tangled mass of limbs. As he collapsed in on himself like a house of cards, he could feel the azure blade rip the air overhead, missing by less than an inch as its owner growled in frustration.

The compacted Adept sprang up, reversing his momentum with Force-assisted power, rising to his feet with all the inexorable motion of an inverted comet. Again, there was no time for a conventional attack, and so the Entar drove his forehead against his prey’s, exhausting the remainder of his motion against the Taldryanite’s face.

Zoron stumbled back, howling, yet too filled with the Dark Side’s unending wrath to stop. Timeros likewise flinched, trying to suppress the drum roll of agony beating against his head. In the moments of respite, Timeros could see crystalline beads adorn the Juggernaut like macabre jewelry, marred only by spots of dried blood and barely-sealed flesh. Somehow, some combination of innate toughness and supernatural healing had conspired to keep the wounded Taldryanite alive.

It would not last long.

The two men recovered nearly simultaneously, one through transcendent rage, the other by dint of supreme self-control. Immediately, they lashed forward, blades brimming with hatred. They came together amidst a deluge of sparks. It temporarily blinded the two men, yet their movements remained uninhibited.

Timeros shot through the conflagration with sudden speed, blade angling upwards. The Knight moved likewise, his weapon tearing sideways, as if to chop off his adversary’s head. For a moment, it seemed as though it would work.

Then the emaciated Adept was gone, moving with prescient knowledge to tear through the air, his saber fallen to the sands. The next moment, his second lightsaber lit the desert, its amethyst glow active for only moments as the Adept twisted in midair, in a blind, aerial lunge.

He hit the ground seconds later. So did Zoron. So, instants later, did Zoron’s head.

Timeros nodded, satisfied, as he watched his enemy’s blood wash across the sands...and then, he stopped.

They stood around him. Hundreds of them, perhaps more. They stood as they had died, marked by starvation, violence and abuse. Some were holding whips, others crude knives. And they were, all of them, looking at the Arconae.

The dead of Begeren stood in silent vigil, watching.

So...the weak have come to avenge their brother, Timeros thought, as a twinge of dread clutched his normally icebound heart. “Come on, then, curs,” he growled softly. “Let’s see if you can do better than he could.”

There was a ruffle among the dead, and a whisper, as they turned away from Timeros, towards the crystal he and Zoron had so carelessly damaged before. Only now did the Adept see that it was guttering, its light fading and weak.

The strong fear the weak. The weak bide their time.

Revelation flooded him, then. “Of course,” he whispered. “This is not just a grave. It’s a gaol.”

He reached for his blasters.

The next instant, bolts tore through the air, extinguishing the crystal’s light entirely. For just a moment, the dead seemed surprised and tranquil. Then they set into motion, marching stiffly out of their graves and towards the Valley of Monuments they had once been forced to construct.

Yes, Timeros smiled, inwardly, as he watched them go, their murderous intent clear to his senses.

Render to the Sith what is their due.

We will take what is left.