With the dawn came snowfall. Tumbling out of the skies thick with clouds, the constant tumble of a billion different flakes reduced the sunrise to a mere bright glow on the horizon. Blanketing out everything, it had reduced visibility to little more than a few meters at a time. Save for the towering shapes of the lost ruins, and the flat blade-like form of the citadel’s outermost walls, the world was one of pure white. The only other light-source came from a dim glow on the fringes of the citadel's outermost tower, from a broad window set against the mountain.

The blue-white of a plasma fire shone brightly against the biting cold, offering some small respite and heating that room there alone. Within it was little more than a small hovel. Strings of animals, skinned and salted hung from the ceiling, while opposite them a simple bed was set against one wall. A desk rough hewn from stone had been placed next to the wall, piled high with dataslates and ancient tablets. The room’s lone occupant - one of the few permanent residents of the winterlocked planet - had spent much of the previous night skimming through details and comparing notes with historical records. He had paused only to watch the rising sun now, sitting with his chair facing the window and running one gauntleted hand through his greying beard. It was a recent edition, one of several changes Tarvitz had made during his twilight years.

The man who sat in that chair, now in his mid sixties, barely resembled his younger self. What little colour that had been in his hair had long since faded away, and his scalp was closely shorn. Furs and winter clothing had taken the place of his armour, and even the lightsaber he had once carried had been replaced with an ancient heavy blade of alchemical origin. He sat there for some time, simply watching and thinking. The semi-blizzard had not ceased since the previous night. In fact, it hadn’t stopped since the first flakes had come earlier that month. Winter was neverending here, but it was a sign that it was moving into its harsher months. There were no howls of wolves, no bellows of the remnant Yuuzhan Vong beasts which had acclimated to the world’s limited ecosystem. They were either in hibernation or had moved on, and that meant hunting was required.

Tarvitz smiled slightly at the thought of the challenge, the thrill of chasing down a pack and outwitting them. Between it and his efforts to more deeply explore the world’s darker secrets it was all that had kept him sane. With the fall of the Collective, the First Order and the Brotherhood’s corrupt leadership, there had been no challenges left to him. Even his self-imposed tasks had rarely borne the true victories he desired after mastering his chosen style of lightsaber combat and excelling at craftsmanship. As others had suggested, he had done his level best to settle down, to live a life of normality. Yet the simple fact was that he couldn’t. For as long as he could remember, Tarvitz had struggled against something, and within a few months the boredom of retirement had nearly driven him insane. Rhen Var had offered a reprieve from that monotony.

The simple life there was a hard one, impossible for most and it offered ever new ways to kill a man. In the first week alone Tarvitz had died almost three times, from hidden chasms and monsters alike. Yet there was a beauty to the crude simplicity of it all which he found satisfying. Uncomplicated was the word, and just as Yoda or Kenobi had done before him, Tarvitz had found the desolation and untamed nature of an Outer Rim world to his liking. There were no Sith to fight, no pirates to combat or prisoners to rescue, but until old age or one mistake too many claimed him, it was enough to keep him sane.

As he waited, Tarvitz heard a distant whistling howl of a pack beast somewhere in the far distance. Perhaps he still had a chance to claim one more meal before waiting to weather out the heavy snowfall that was to come. With a smile, Tarvitz rose from his chair and snatched up the spear resting against his desk, before turning to leave. “Normality” might have been a substantial change from his previous lifestyle, but in a place as unforgiving and harsh as Rhen Var, he found it to his liking.