He had returned to his barracks to get his datapad before he was able to go on his weekend pass. After he retrieved it, Armad turned and caught a glimpse of something barely sticking out from under his pillow. Armad looked around to see if anyone was watching or paying any attention in his direction. Carefully lifting up his pillow, Armad was able to see that it was just a piece of folded flimsiplast. Thinking that that was odd, as Umbarans as a whole, had moved on to all things technology. Armad looked around again to see if anyone was paying any attention to him, but he was the only one left in the barracks. Picking it up, Armad unfolded it and read what was on it.

“Phanius.”

Just one word, and it seemed familiar somehow. Curious about what this meant, Armad immediately left for his office at Shadow Security to do some research. Armad typed the name into his computer and a wealth of information scrolled up on his monitor. “A Jedi Master, huh?” Armad thought. Though there was not much written on this Umbaran Jedi Master, it did mention that he was intelligent and charismatic while in the Jedi Order. But he did abandon his oath and leave the Order, possibly causing the Fourth Great Schism, and subsequently starting the New Sith Wars.

Of the various Commanders that were listed on both sides of the war, only one caught Armad’s eye, Belia Darzu. But what had really made him zero in on her was that she had perfected the art of mechu-deru. Armad had always had a fascination with all thing technology, as most Umbarans were, so coming across something like this was a boon for him. It said that she had a hidden fortress on Tython, so he knew that that would be a place that he would need to visit, and soon.

But another planet had continuously popped up during his research, Ruusan. It was a planet had been ravaged from many battles that had taken place there during the war. There was something about saying Ruusan aloud that gave him a longing to venture there. Armad pulled up the navigational data on the two planets, and found that either would take him longer to get there than he had the time at the moment. Longer than what he had for the weekend, and his duty to finish his military stint kept him from leaving right then. He only had a couple of months left and then he would have the time he need to pursue this quest. Scrubbing the history from his computer, least someone came across it and used it to their advantage, Armad went about with his plans for the weekend.

Over the last couple of months of his military service, Armad kept having a feeling that something was pulling him back to the information that he’d found earlier. It wasn’t until he had about a month left that he realized that he had a slight problem. Most Umbarans weren’t permitted to leave the planet unless it was for official business, and even that was rare anymore. Thinking about it for a moment, Armad almost forgot that he was now the CEO of a rather prominent Security Firm. As such, it would give him a good reason and opportunity to leave the planet. Armad smiled as he started to make plans to first travel to Ruusan then to Tython.

Manually added by Adept Xen'Mordin Vismorsus-Palpatine

Manually added by Augur Sanguinius Tsucyra Entar

Sleep was a good thing, something that he enjoyed greatly, but this dream was perplexing. It was of happy times, times before he found the dark side of the Force. Over the years, his dreams, and nightmares, had kept him from getting any rest, which had started to cause him to question the reality of things around him. So he developed a way to shield his mind against dreaming altogether. Why he was dreaming now was very alarming. Panicking himself awake, Armad jumped up off his bunk and immediately tried to call upon the Force to….but it wasn’t there. He couldn’t feel the Force at all.

He knew that he’d spent his younger and adolescent years without using the Force, so he knew that he wouldn’t be completely helpless as some of his fellow Clan members, who’ve been using the Force from an early age. While he gets dressed, Armad contact his Battleteam Leader to see what is going on. Aexod informs him that he now has the ability to touch the Force, and that he’s having a difficult time controlling his new found power. Armad suggests that he seek out his second, as if what he suspects has happened, DarkHawk will have lost his connection to the Force and together, they would be able to help each other until this situation resolves itself.

Ending that conversation, Armad had an eerie realization drift up from memory. His Master, Macron, had been a product of others and self Sith experimentation for his entire life, and was definitely unsure how his old Master would react to not having access to the Force. Hurriedly getting dressed, Armad tried to get ahold Vicious, Macron’s current apprentice. Armad found that Vicious was slightly perturbed that he couldn’t access the Force, but that he was coping the best he could and that he hadn’t heard from Macron in a few days. Which was not unheard of, as he was prone to disappearing into his experiments for days on end. Telling Vicious to make his way to his Master’s quarters to check to see if he was there, then head to his lab on level 13. Grabbing his wrist controller, and tapping a few commands to send a couple of his droids to the level 13 lab, Armad headed himself towards his Master’s alchemaic lab.

Finally arriving on level 13, very tired, Armad forgot how exhausting it was to hurriedly walk somewhere without the aid of the Force. Thought about making a mental note to work on his physical strength and stamina, but chuckled that thought away. Though if this wasn’t resolved fairly quickly, then he might have to revisit that line of thought. Armad could see Vicious arriving from the other direction, when he he noticed him, Vicious smirked and shook his head in the negative, indicating that Macron hadn’t been back to his quarters in a while. Which was fairly known, that their Master could generally be found in his lab doing some experiment of one kind or another. As they neared the entrance to the lab itself, they started to hear loud piercing screaming coming from within. Sharing a quick fearful concerned look between them, both rushed in to see their Master writhing on the floor, in what appeared to be severe pain, as several nearby objects had either been destroyed or crushed while flailed about in his battle armor. It was just as he had thought, Macron’s Sith alchemy was starting to reject the implants and enhancements that he’d performed on himself over the years, and now that he could no longer use the Force to compel what he’d done to be accepted, it was literally biting him in the arse.

Knowing that they should probably get him to the infirmary, but not seeing an easy way to do it, both of them knew that the only other option would be to just put him out of his misery. But they both knew that if they failed and he came back, which would be just like him, that he would remind them both of whom the Master was, or he would just kill them both. Either way, not something they wanted to find out. Luckily at that moment, the droids that Armad had called for had arrived. Not wanting to subject his droids to too much damage, Armad looked around for anything that would subdue the Adept for his transport to the infirmary, which would by no means be easy. Looking around for anything that might help, Armad spotted a couple of syringes laying on the workbench, and recalling from his past, that Macron had said that those were filled with a powerful sedative, but never really explained why he had them or what they were for. Typing in a couple of commands into his wrist controller, Armad’s droids came forward to pick up the writhing Adept, three to each side. As soon as each droid had gained purchase on an appendage or piece of armor, Armad stepped in and injected one of the syringes into Macron’s neck. Almost immediately the Sith Alchemist calmed down and stopped flailing about. Giving a sigh of relief, Armad instructed the droids to make their way to the infirmary, while he commed ahead to let them know what to expect.

While in a turbolift, about half way there, Macron came out of his sedation. Coming to, he grabbed hold of the two nearest droids and crushed them in his gauntlets. The other four couldn’t handle the weight of the armored Juggernaut, and dropped him. Seeing the pain and anger swell in his eyes, Armad jumped back and up into the corner of the turbolift, narrowly avoiding getting swept onto his back. Vicious was not so lucky and received an armored boot to the shin, dropping him to one knee. The four remaining droids fared the worst of the damage, taking several kicks or arm bashes that they, either got ripped apart or damaged beyond use. Dropping back down, Armad pulled out another of the syringes and injected it into Macron again. “He burned through the sedation?” Vicious asked incredulously.

“His enhanced body and poison resistances make it hard for things like that to work for very long.” Armad replied. “Looks like we’re going to have to drag him ourselves, and we’ll have to be quick about it, as I’ve only got one more syringe left.” Each grabbing a leg, they continued on towards the infirmary, but it was slow going, plus they figured out about how much time they had before their Master burned through that sedative and wanted to be ready to administer the last dose before he woke up.

Finally limping into the infirmary, both Vicious and Armad looked like they’d both been put through the wringer. Vicious was favoring his right leg and holding his right arm against his ribs, while Armad had his right arm in a sling and the left side of his face was swollen with blood trickling out his nose. When the medics got over their initial shock, they asked what had happened. Armad recanted what had happened since finding their Master in a slurred voice, as Vicious was having trouble breathing. He finished by stating that about ten minutes ago, Macron had burned through his second injection of sedative, and proceeded to kick and punch his apprentices, until Vicious was about to control his arms long enough to administer the last syringe. “You probably have about three or four minutes until he wakes up again. Don’t know how long it’ll take this time.” Armad stated as they dropped his legs in front of the gathering medics.

“Let’s get him into one of the stasis chambers before that happens!” The medic barked. He must have been on the receiving end of a Macron punishment before, or seen the results of one.

Vicious managed to hobble his way over to an empty chair and plopped down in it, wincing in pain from the jolt of the sudden stop. Armad dropped to his knees and started to fall over as he started to see blackness coming in from the edges of his vision. The last thing he remembered was hearing someone say, “oh crap” as he watched the floor greet him.

Armad’s comlink chirped with the sound of a message being received to his datapad. Pausing in his work, he pulled his datapad out from under a pile of wires and discarded parts, and opened the new message. It was a call for those that were proficient in computers and data retrieval, for a mission to a planet code named Cobalt. Responding in the affirmative, he immediately received another message detailing what information that he was to gather and the coordinates to the Cobalt, and what little information that they had been able to gather. Going to his office, Armad picked up a couple of small droids that he had created earlier, and added some new gadgets with additional programming, then headed to the nearest hangar. After commandeering a Clan freighter, Armad punched in the coordinates for his home planet of Umbara. He wanted to stop there, one to check on his company and pick up a more businesslike attire, and as a backstop, should the local authorities or the Dominion decided to track where he originated from. Switching ships on Umbara, Armad set out for the planet codenamed Cobalt.

Arriving in system, Armad was immediately greeted by an automatic welcome greeting, which gave the rules and regulations speech and a frequency to contact when wishing to gain entry into one of the planets cities. As he neared the planet, Armad could see that it was mostly a barren planet, with very sporadic areas that held vegetation, as well as seeing several large circles dotting the continents. After contacting the being on the other end of the frequency given, Armad was given permission to land in the spaceport of the largest dome city. Making a semi-flawless landing, Armad was greeted by a port official, who gave another welcome speech, but this time with the where and where-not to go areas. As Armad was about to go through the door out of his hangar, the official turned and gave one last “rule”, of a recent incident that had quarantined a hangar and several rooms on the other side to the port, he cautioned him to steer clear of the area until the quarantine had been lifted.

Thinking that that was rather suspicious, Armad nodded his acknowledgement and made it way out to the promenade. He was immediately assaulted by the busy sounds of vendors talking and selling up their wares. Walking past the different stores, Armad got to see the different products that this planet can produce. He wanted to stop in several of the tech stores and see where their level of tech compared to his own, but he knew that if he did he would get stuck in them and the chances of accomplishing his mission would suffer. Suppressing his curiosity, Armad continued on past until he came to a relatively isolated terminal and started making random inquiries into the local security companies and seemingly innocuous data retrievals to see, if any, red flags were raised. He felt that someone was watching him, but they felt more security making sure I didn't do anything wrong, than for what he was doing. Deftly pulling his droid, he was glad to find that the technology was compatible with each other, he plugged it into the terminal and let it do its search.

While it was searching for his mission data, Armad decided to look up what he could on this suspicious quarantine thing. He found that it had happened about a week and a half ago, no official reason had been given, and there had been reports of strange noises and missing people that had been curious enough to venture close.

The message concluded, and the comlink shut down. Undesirables. The Krath and Obelisk Orders are to be purged, and certain species were to be eliminated from within our ranks. A memory from his upbringing, it was reminiscent of the great Jedi purge, Order 66, which was orchestrated by Emperor Palpatine. The only difference now was that instead of massive amounts of clone troopers, it will be those within the Brotherhood ranks. Another thought that came to mind was the old Imperialist view of species-bias towards those that were deemed undesirable and shunned, and that was something he definitely didn’t want to be seen in that way.

His datapad chimed, foretelling of the new message that was waiting for him. Opening the message, she saw that it was a more detailed description of the Grand Masters plan. It told of what had already been put into motion, as well as what was planned for afterwards. At the bottom of the missive was a list of the undesirable species. He was taken aback by the list of those that were now deemed undesirable. He found that his own Clan had eight members that encompassed six of those species. Half of those were Journeyman and would be easy to dispatch, the rest would be more formidable and not so easily taken.

He knew that it wouldn’t take much to make those Journeymen disappear and make it look like an accident or a grave error on their part. Since they were new to the Clan, they haven’t had too big of a chance to make a name for themselves. But the other four, two Knights, an Augur, and an Adept. All friends, all either in positions of power or been in positions of power in the past.

Walking along the corridor, Armad felt himself looking around at the different species that made up the Clan and Warhost rosters. Every now and then, he would spy a species that was listed, and wondered if he could kill that particular being without raising too much of an alarm. Passing members of the Clan who were on the undesirable list gave him pause, making him question his loyalties.

Could he really do it kill his own friends? I mean it IS a directive from the Grand Master, but killing friends. That is something that he didn’t think he could actually do. But he didn’t want to outright refuse to not follow a Dark Council directive. So what could he do, what would he do? Armad had no clue. He could always start with the Journeymen, but if he were found out then the others could ban together, that would be unfortunate. He wondered whether the rest of the Clan was having the same dilemma that he was facing now. He’d thought of trying to broach the subject with others. But he didn’t know how he would even start that conversation.

Realizing that he definitely needed guidance, Armad decided to seek out a member of the Summit, whether his own House or the Clan’s, to see what their plan was for this new directive. But in the intervening time, Armad was just going to do nothing. He wasn’t going to kill any members of his Clan, other Clans undesirables maybe, but only if they encroached on Naga Sadow’s territory. But if a Sadowan did approach him, he wasn’t going aid them in any way, even if they were looking for help or sanctuary, he would turn them away, offering no assistance.

This place did not feel right, it had the look of the room where the statue was, but there was some familiarity to it that made me question if reality. Everything in the room looked and felt normal, but there was something else that kept bugging him about this place. The only thing that was different was that there was another person in the room with him. Looking around, Armad came to the conclusion that this room hadn’t really changed, but when he tried to expand his senses beyond this room something blocked him.

That had to be it, some kind of test to prove that I am worthy or able to wield or know the knowledge contained within this statute. A test of character maybe, or something more.

Still standing motionless, the other person mimicked Armad and was stock still as well. Taking a step forward, Armad saw that the other person did the same. But instead of stopping when he did, the other jumped into a dead run straight towards the Warrior. Sticking the statue in an inside pocket of his overcoat, Armad pulled and ignited his lightsaber with bare moments to spare, raising it high to block a forceful downward strike. The other person had jumped the last ten feet and had come down with a power strike intended to cleave him in two. The force of the blow threatened to knock him over if he hadn’t of dropped to one knee to help absorb the impact. Expecting another slashing attack from the lightsaber, Armad was caught unawares as he was kicked in the chest, knocking him backwards onto his back. Armad the able to salvage that mistake by turning the fall into a backward somersault that ended with him back on one knee, but with his lightsaber pointed directly at his opponent, keeping him at bay to give him some time to recover.

When he was able to catch his breath, Armad was finally able to focus on his opponent and see who or what it was he was to face. What he saw, he was not ready for, but wasn’t completely surprised by what he saw. Himself, Armad was looking at himself, well it looked like him, but this one’s skin was closer to ashen white than the light blue hue of his own skin. The eyes he was looking into were very close to a yellowish tint to them. But that was where the differences stopped. This shadow-self appeared as if he had never learned restraint or had found someone to teach him to control his abilities, and the dark side had completely consumed him.

“Weakling.” the shadow Umbaran stated with contempt in his voice. “You could be so much more if you’d just let loose and not hold yourself back.” Just before he finished talking, the shadow-self darted forward, swatting away Armad’s lightsaber with an inside sweep of his own lightsaber, and started with a follow up backhand slash that was meant to sever his head. Using the moment of lightsaber contact, Armad lunged forward to strike at the other him’s right knee, with the intent of buckling it back into a locked position or to hyper-extend it. Causing him to kick his leg backward, throwing him off balance. Both Armad and his shadow-self used the brief second to reset themselves, both now facing each other.

“Weak? No, just more powerful.” Armad responded to the earlier accusation. “You are just the unrestrained beast with only death and mayhem as your primary forte.” Spreading his arms out to his sides in a show of cockiness, “I am what comes from control and discipline. And because of that, I have learned things that someone like you would never have learned without patience.” Armad finished, keeping his arms out to his side just taunting the shadow to attack, and not to disappoint, he did. Armad could see the fury building with each word that he spoke, and at the last word, the shadow-self roared in anger and rushed.

Smirking as the other advanced on him, Armad pivoted on his right foot, bringing his lightsaber to point forwards, and his left foot behind him in a proper Makashi stance. The uncontrolled attacks of the shadow-self were wild and powerful, meant to strike killing blows each time, attacks that easily blocked or redirected with minimal effort and precise lightsaber parries. With each deflection and failed attack, Armad could see that his opponent was getting more and more frustrated, fueling its anger to the point where it was going to make a mistake. Patience was a good thing in most instances, but Armad was tiring of toying with this brute of himself. Armad waited until it started a power diagonal slash and stepped back just enough to give him room to bat the other’s lightsaber downward, over balancing it. Not wasting the advantage, Armad lunged forward, spinning to roll over and across his shadow-self’s back. Landing on his feet, Armad used that spinning momentum to slash through meat and bone, severing its back leg.

Gathering the Force, Armad hammered his shadow-self’s lightsaber from his hand during its brief moment of surprise and pain. Calling the loose lightsaber to his hand, Armad walked forward to slash him across its gut, opening him up. Standing over his shadow-self, Armad looked down and the fuming Umbaran. “See, without learning what I had, I might never have been able to defeat you,” Armad stated matter-of-factly. The Warrior could feel his opponent pulling on the Force, just as it pointed his hands at him and unleashed a torrent of lightning from its fingers. Crossing the lightsabers, Armad easily caught the lightning on the blades and flung it back at the sender. As it writhed in agony, Armad gave it his final words. “That is why I am better, you are just an uncontrolled brute who has no concept of accumulating power. You just want to destroy and kill indiscriminately, and while I do enjoy destruction and death, I like to take my time and savor the pain and agony that it brings.” With that said, Armad sliced through its neck, ending the conversation.

Everything shifted again, and Armad could feel the presence of others in the room and beyond. Heaving a sigh of relief, Armad pocketed the statue and continued to search the room with the others.

Manually added by Seer Keira Viru

Manually added by Seer Locke Sonjie