#darth scabrous

[oh-no-eu-didnt]

Darth Scabrous was a human Sith lord and headmaster of an academy on Odacer-Faustin. A researcher of Sith alchemy, Scabrous attempted to extend his life through experimentation with plants. His experiments worked, but left the resurrected mindless monsters. 

Source: The Essential Reader’s Companion (Art: Brian Rood; 2012)

First Appearance: Red Harvest (2010)

Read more on Wookieepedia.

[irrfahrer]

Headcanon LIII : Memories

If the Sickness soaks up the memories and feelings of all infected  and adds them to its own counciousness to give the memories to the infected after sorting through them (the Infected on Odacer Faustin first only acting on insticnt and then learning again to fight with Lightsabers after the sickness had sorted through the victimsmemories). And if the Murakami Orchids have genetic Memories from Parent flower to Seeds. And if the Murakami Orchid is grown of a Seedling from Zos Murakami Orchid. Then Zivs Orchid Sproutling has the memories and feelings of not only the Murakami Orchid who ahd been sacreficed in the Ritual three thausand years ago, but also the memories and feelings of those Sith that had been infected by the Sickness on Odacer Faustin, including Darth Drear and Darth Scabrous.And those Memoris trickle into Zivs dreams, because when sh sleeps and has her natural mindshield lowerd the Murakami Orchid goes through her memories to learn more a about the Galaxy. WHich means that Ziv occaisonally has very private emoris of two Sith in her head that influence her musclememory or habits.

A example: Ziv knows the layout of the complete Odacer-Faustin Academy before it was destroyed, because she had wandered in her dreams the Acadmy in the feet of someone who had lived and researched there for decades. She would however very easy go the wrong way if she would think about it actively, because that would be not her using muscle-memory and memorized habits. In the same manner she is able to  read and understand Drears and Scabrous handwriting in their research notes which Zivs finds annoying but is also thankful for, yet this make sher even mroe annoyed.As a fellow scientist she is too curious about Sith Alchemy and having occiasionally the memory of a written down result of such experiment is disturbingly fascinating for Ziv.

[sithisms]

"Darth Scabrous was a fool."

[abs0luteb4stard]

[atamascolily]

Okay, so was someone going to tell me there was a Legends novel about the AgriCorps, Force-bonded orchids, and a zombie plague spawned by Sith alchemy or was I just going to have to find it through browsing Wookiepeedia myself??

Unlike those other Jedi sidelined to the Agricultural Corps—young Jedi whose abilities have not proved up to snuff—Hestizo Trace possesses one extraordinary Force talent: a gift with plants. Suddenly her quiet existence among greenhouse and garden specimens is violently destroyed by the arrival of an emissary from Darth Scabrous. For the rare black orchid that she has nurtured and bonded with is the final ingredient in an ancient Sith formula that promises to grant Darth Scabrous his greatest desire.

I mean, I have no idea if this will be good or not. I just know that I have to read this. 

(apparently, the original title was Black Orchid, but they changed it because they thought it sounded too much like a romance, and I can’t stop laughing, especially when I remember that the working/fake title for ROTJ was Blue Harvest and... yeah.)

[badsithnocookie]

Me: [writes a line where Vette makes a crack about someone being a zombie]

Me: Wait, do zombies even exist in star wars?

Wookiepedia: Duh.

The Imperial bioweapons Project I71A, known as the Sickness, was an infectious viral agent created through the powers of Sith alchemy that attacked biological tissue and transformed its victims into undead monstrosities. The disease was originally created by the Sith Lord Darth Drear on Odacer-Faustin sometime prior to 4645 BBY, and was intended to grant immortality to its crafter. Drear's initial experiments resulted in failure, and the Sith Lord himself fell victim to his creation. Over one thousand years later, during the period of unrest following the Great Galactic War, the Sith Lord Darth Scabrous attempted to recreate Drear's disease in the hope that he would be able to succeed where his predecessor had failed. Scabrous likewise failed to create a path to immortality, and in the process unleashed the virus upon the unsuspecting students and staff of the Odacer-Faustin Sith academy. Before long, all of the Sith Acolytes and Masters on the planet died and were born anew as cannibalistic monstrosities motivated only by the will to eat.

for bonus points, the Odacer-Faustin Sith Academy? was an Academy of the Reconstituted Sith Empire - ie, the Empire as it exists in swtor.

The Empire in SWTOR has canonically created a zombie plague. Not deliberately, but still.

[audiobookblog]

Red Harvest: Star Wars

Red Harvest: Star Wars

The era of the Old Republic is a dark and dangerous time, as Jedi Knights valiantly battle the Sith Lords and their ruthless armies. But the Sith have disturbing plans—and none more so than the fulfillment of Darth Scabrous’s fanatical dream, which is about to become nightmarish reality. Unlike those other Jedi sidelined to the Agricultural Corps—young Jedi whose abilities have not proved up to…

[audiobookers]

New Audiobook has been published on http://www.audiobook.pw/audiobook/red-harvest-star-wars/

Red Harvest: Star Wars

The era of the Old Republic is a dark and dangerous time, as Jedi Knights valiantly battle the Sith Lords and their ruthless armies. But the Sith have disturbing plans—and none more so than the fulfillment of Darth Scabrous’s fanatical dream, which is about to become nightmarish reality. Unlike those other Jedi sidelined to the Agricultural Corps—young Jedi whose abilities have not proved up to snuff—Hestizo Trace possesses one extraordinary Force talent: a gift with plants. Suddenly her quiet existence among greenhouse and garden specimens is violently destroyed by the arrival of an emissary from Darth Scabrous. For the rare black orchid that she has nurtured and bonded with is the final ingredient in an ancient Sith formula that promises to grant Darth Scabrous his greatest desire. But at the heart of the formula is a never-before-seen virus that’s worse than fatal—it doesn’t just kill, it transforms. Now the rotting, ravenous dead are rising, driven by a bloodthirsty hunger for all things living—and commanded by a Sith Master with an insatiable lust for power and the ultimate prize: immortality . . . no matter the cost.

[irrfahrer]

Theo sometimes experiences visual hallucinations. They're usually related to his PTSD and most of the time he can tell when he's seeing something that isn't real. That said, he craves physical contact, its grounding for him, and he enjoys the closeness of other people emotionally and physically.

Tell me a fact about your oc and I will respond with a semi-related fact about mine !

"Theo sometimes experiences visual hallucinations. They're usually related to his PTSD and most of the time he can tell when he's seeing something that isn't real." Not hallucinations, but ZIv is prone to very uncomfortable Deja-Vus. The highly force-sensetive Murakami Orchids have a pool of memories they take from to learn and so did the sentient SIckness that after all is the corrupted concious of a Murakami Orchid. This is shown in the by The Sickness infected people first loose all their mental and physical capabilities and slowly over time "learn" skills like using and leading a Lightsaber as the infectd students on Odacer Faustin did. What the Infected learn is controlled by the corrupted Councious of the Sickness, as shown when the SIckness offers Lussk to "make him powerful as long as he serves them", but when he insists on keep beeing himself The Sickness takes his concious from him. The SIckness takes those skills from the pool of all the memories of all the infected through which they go through telepathically. Which was a long text to explain that Zivs Murakami Orchid uses Zivs memories and the pool of memories of the other Mukamis to learn and as Ziv is connect to the Orchid, she occaisonally will have dreams that are memories from another person who had been infectd with The SIckness. And this people happen to be Darth Drear and Darth Scabrous, who were both infected with the sickness. Ziv cannot control anything about this process and thinks that its just are very "kriffed up" dreams. However, in some moments when she is for example on Odacer Faustin to retrieve Drears sword or when she goes through the rests of Scabrous' notes and experiments, she finds herself "knowing" what is written on those notes or "knowing" what way to go through the underground Temple beneath the destroyed Sith Academy. Obviously she is smart enough to figure out that the memory of walking through the academy is not her hallucinating, because when looking down the feet walking are human and not her Tynnan hindpaws. It does not help that Ziv has a deep curiosity for SIth-Alchemy and this deja-vus are playing right into a interest she really should not follow any more.

"That said, he craves physical contact, its grounding for him, and he enjoys the closeness of other people emotionally and physically." Ziv is in a permanent battle with herself between the exteme of "craving physical contact and emotional closeness" and "I do not want to be treated like a plushie or pet and in the past everytime someone was close to me physically in a not sexual manner, it was them treatening me like a plushie". That Ziv is such a low hanging fruit is her trying to find a way to find closeness to people without running into he danger of beeing put beneath them as people tend to do because as a Tynnanshe looks very adorable and cute and people automatically reach out to her to ran heir hand over her head and ears. In sexual situations (or romantically flirty) she can at least control that she is seen as a partner and equal and not an adorable armrest. Ziv usually shys away from physical contact in any other situation. This struggle also shows in the way she treats her friends, because she tends to take over a "stern nurturing" role as a medic or in a older sibling role, to make sure she is in no way treated adorable or cute. Ask @kyberllcore who is barely two years younger than Ziv and most of the time ends up beeing treated like a preteen by her. Ziv will use her cute appearences in her work, like when she is calming young children by purring or holding them against her soft fur or when she uses the vibration of her purring and touch to calm a anxious patient, but this is again a situation were she is in a nurturing, older-siblinglike or even mother-like role in which she is socially on a higher stair than her patients. only situations where the roles are clear and respect is directly stated Ziv actually seeks out the physical contact she longs for, like in the theard with @hunters-house wherin Ziv specifically looks for physical contact (leaning against her masters shoulder, sitting beside him on the sickbed, reaching for his arm), because she can be sure that he in the role of her Master has a certaine way of seeing her (as a capable companion, friend, assistant, and student but not a immature child to raise) and that way does not include seeing her as a adorable plushie.

[irrfahrer]

Some OC questions from the meme! ☕📚🌗

༓･*.☽25 OC QUESTIONS☾.*･༓

☕ Give us one (or more if you feel like it) of your OCs deep dark secrets! Why do they keep it hidden? Spill the tea! Ziv is a murderer. During Order 66, Ziv had been as a Medic in a sickbay, so the Clones she had interacted with had all been in some way injured. Accordingly she survived out of luck. The one clone who came after murdering the other Healers for her as she was hiding, had already thrown away his blaster as it had been crushed with the force by another Healer. So he had dragged Ziv out of her hidingplace under one of the biodbeds by her hindpaws, held her in place on the ground and strangled her. Ziv panicky reached out and digged her claws in the Clone face and than did what she had learned to do as easy as breathing: Force Healing. In that matter of- she speeded up the celldeviding, but instead of stopping when the injur was healed she - panicky and frightened- never stopped until the clones biomoss died and started to rot under her paw. Ziv had murderd someone. She had murderd someone who she had just patched up a day before. Not only had she as a Helaer murdered someone. But she had used the most purest, beautiful Force-Technique commiting that murder. Ziv keeps what had happned to her during the Order 66 a secret out of shame and panic, but whenever she tries to reach out and use Forcehealing the "rotten face" is back in her mind, blocking the ability. She knows that people die in war, she knows that pepole die, there had been patients who had died despite her treatments, she knows that she had acted in pure self-defence, but she also knows that she is a healer and that her paws should save pepoples lifes instead of ending them. SHe also knows that she had murdered someone, who had been under he protection in the most gruesome way possible, not swiftly and clean, but by letting them rot alive until his biomass had drooped down on her, because she had been scared.

📚 If your OC was given some kind of forbiddon knowledge, what would they do with it? Would they tell anyone? Use it for evil or good? How would it change their outlook on life, if at all? Actually Ziv had already been forbidden, secret knowledge in the Form of the highly telepathic Murakami Orchid Sapling she carries aorund in a pendant around her neck. And she also does her best to research on the Story of Odacer-Faustin, on Darth Drear who still haunts her nightmares, and Darth Scabrous, so she could continue to keep the Murakami Orchid safe and the Sickness and its child the Blackwing Virus away from anyone in the Galaxy. Accordingly it might be suprising for somone like Ziv who seems to never stops talking, but she keeps the murakami orchid and its story an usage suprisingly well hidden, in fact there is noone beside herself who knows about the Orchid and since her mind can not be read due to her strong mindshield it will stay this way.

🌗 Early mornings or late nights? What do they spend their time doing during these hours? There is not a single time of the day in which Ziv is not moving- unless the herbs she uses to push herself wear off and she just drops uncouncious for a day or two wherever she is at the moment- but usually she orefers nights. Due to the Murakami Orchid going through her dreams and occaisonally a memory of a by the Sickness infected Ziv appears in her dreams, Ziv prefers to just gopple down a can of caf, take in stimulating herbs and power through whatever anyone else is calling night. In this time Ziv will continue to study for her work as a midwife and also conducts expierments for her botanic studies, prepares salves and oils from the healingherbs for her patients and, when she becomes too tiered, will try to meditate through Alchaka, because she is worried she would fall asleep when she would sit still.

[atamascolily]

Lily reads Star Wars: Red Harvest, part six

In which EVERYTHING IS ON FIRE (and no, I do not exaggerate). Eat your heart out--oh, wait, sorry, eat someone else’s heart out. My bad.

(If you’re just joining me, check out the “Red Harvest” tag on my blog for previous posts)

We left off with Darth Scabrous waiting for Zo in the library. There's the obligatory villain monologue with some much-needed backstory.

“This library,” he said, “is the oldest part of the academy, older even than the tower itself. It was constructed over a thousand years ago by a Sith Lord named Darth Drear. He founded the academy, back when the planet itself was young. The ancient writings tell about how he used his first students as laborers. For hundreds of years, the Masters at the academy believed that a good many of those students died down in these very chambers, using the Force to move hundreds of tons of snow and ice and dig out these corridors and chambers to house Drear’s vast collection of … specimens. It was thought that Drear worked the students until they died from exhaustion.”

Blah blah blah Sith holocron blah blah blah eternal life. The usual stuff.

“Before he died, Darth Drear wrote of the final stage of the process—the step that he himself was never able to achieve. He dispatched his sentries to a nearby planet to abduct a Jedi and bring him to the secret temple underneath the library. After ingesting the elixir, in the final hours before his body gave in completely, under exactly the right circumstances and conditions, Drear planned to use a ceremonial Sith sword to cut open the Jedi’s chest while he was still alive, and eat his heart. Only then, with that final infusion of midi-cholorians still warm from the Jedi’s blood, would the decay process be held back—granting the Sith Lord his ultimate immortality.”

I TOLD YOU THEY WENT THERE.

The plant!zombies show up again - turns out they weren't really dead! They carry Zo down to the Secret Sith Basement at Scabrous's command, where the sacrifice is to take place. But don’t worry, not!Qui-gon is in hot pursuit! The tree librarian grabs not!Qui-Gon and dangles him in the air. I am LIVING for this. “No need for your weapon here,” the voice said. “Not in this place of learning. We are both learned beings, are we not? Enlightened and informed by the written word. No need for the encumbrances of physical violence.” It uttered another bulky, dusty chuckle. “Look upon me, if you like. Seek my face.”

There's a bunch of book avalanches. not!Qui-Gon  goes into the tree!Librarian's head at his own urging and sees his memories

It was the librarian’s name, Trace realized, his patronymic, and somehow he knew that on his home planet it meant “lover of knowledge,” a perfect choice for—

HOW DID HE END UP ON A SITH PLANET AS THE SITH LIBRARIAN IF HE WASN'T ACTUALLY EVIL?? Sadly, we don't get answers.

Also, more relevant to the plot, not!Qui-Gon sees the secret Sith basement being built and gets caught up on all the backstory that Scabrous already revealed. Then everything catches on fire and not!Qui-Gon uses the Force to retrieve his lightsaber and create an air bubble to ward off the flames.

He looked at the lightsaber, laboring to evacuate every other thought from his mind. At the Jedi Temple, they had taught that it was never a matter of manipulating the object, but of eliminating the space that separated you from it. Yet at this moment, the object in question had never felt so far away....

The timing of what happened next was critical. Deactivating the bubble, he opened his hand, and the lightsaber flew into it. Its handle was almost too hot to hold, but the solidity of it had never felt better in his life.

I like this attention to detail in my Star Wars.

Not!Qui-gon gets pulled down to the basement via plant zombies for the final showdown as the library burns around him.Good-bye, Tree Librarian -- you may have been evil at the end, or perhaps this whole time, but you were fucking rad.

The mechanic is still alive and in hiding. He gets lured out by Kindra's pleading, only to reveal it was a trap by the zombies and she's a prisoner. The zombies rip her to pieces but the mechanic gets away. I’m so mad because even though I knew it was a trap, and I knew she was going to die, I hoped she got a more badass ending. Sigh.

Meanwhile, the bounty hunter and the newly liberated HK droid discover the zombies are hiding INSIDE the Tauntauns, a la Aliens and it's gross, and now we have zombie tauntauns, too. Turns out the HK droid hates the Sith too! But the bounty hunter got sprayed with tauntaun spit so now he's infected. Good thing droids can't get this... right?

Scabrous tries to kill Zo but not!Qui-gon makes a dramatic entrance and stops him. Not!Qui-gon gets murdered while Zo watches in horror and... I guess he really has more in common with Qui-Gon than I initially thought!

Scabrous transforms into his final form, but the orchid wakes up just in time, and Zo tells it to grow while she starts going to town on the Scabrous and slaughters him with his own sword. It doesn't take, so she switches to her brother's lightsaber, which does better, since it actually cauterizes.

She climbs out of the pit after Scabrous is dead, only to find the rest of the zombie horde waiting for her. The bounty hunter and droid rescue her, but they're attacked by the academy's perimeter cannons, so everthing gets worse fast. The droid jumps out and turns to the lasers on the tower, destroying everything - including the orchid if it's still alive? I'm a little fuzzy on the details here. Fortunately, the mechanic is flying the plane and he's okay.

Zo goes into the trophy room, only to find that the bounty hunter is now a zombie, but he locks himself in a cage before he turns and tells Zo to send him out the airlock, which she does--along with the entire grisly contents of the room, and a last zombie stowaway. FINAL GIRL VICTORY.

Zo returns to Jedi Greenhouse Planet, traumatized but alive. Turns out the guy who we thought was dead in the bounty hunter attack at the beginning of the book is actually alive, so that's good. There's a new orchid waiting for her:

You were with my seed-brother, the orchid said, arching toward her. Is that true?

Yes, I was, she told it, and thought about the voice of the first orchid, the one that she still heard in her mind. I still am, in a way. He saved my life.

Really?

Bennis smiled again, the indulgent smile of a proud parent, and gave the orchid a small pat.

D'awwww. Wait, so the original orchid isn’t really dead? She can still hear him even though it’s gone and they’re separated? Did I miss something in the tumult of the finale?? Or is Zo being metaphorical here?

Also, I’m so curious how the Jedi just... got another orchid so quickly. In our world, orchids can be clonally propagated in HUGE batches, so the AgriCorps could potentially be churning these things out at a massive rate. This raises WAY more world-building questions that this book is NOT going to answer, and it frustrates me, but I doubt the author knows much about actual orchids, so... *shrugs*

But cuteness aside, Zo decides she'd rather study on the Jedi Temple at Coruscant (the mechanic will take her) because she has too much PTSD. Also, this means that if anybody else tries to kidnap the new orchid, they won’t get Zo! I don’t know why the Jedi are even raising these orchids, given that they’re in demand on the Sith black market. Didn’t Zo explain they were the critical ingredient for an awful zombie plague?? DID NOBODY LEARN FROM THIS EXPERIENCE??

This is supposed to be a happy/hopeful ending, and it kinda is, but Zo apparently doesn’t know / the author forgot that the Jedi Temple was destroyed when Corsucant got sacked eight years earlier (as Trace tells us in his introductory scene)... which means she's walking into ANOTHER haunted temple nightmare and doesn't realize it yet. We'll call it.. Red Harvest II: Coruscant Nights, or maybe just Blue Harvest. How about that??

Frode would be waiting for her with the ship, ready to take her back to Coruscant, and whatever might be waiting for her there. The mechanic would be good traveling company, she sensed—there was a low-key air about him that bespoke dozens of untold stories, events that had made up his life and taken him to the unlikely destination of Odacer-Faustin. She felt herself already beginning to trust him.

Wow, I was not expecting this dude to survive, but okay. Also, he got tagged in the beginning as kinda greedy (scuttling the engines of the other bounty hunters to sell) and kinda lazy/stupid/opportunistic/desperate (for ending up as the mechanic for Sith Hogwarts in the first place). But okay, whatever, I guess.

And the moral:

The future was scary, but you couldn’t avoid it, anymore than you could outrun the past.

OR  A MASSIVE ZOMBIE HORDE, AM I RIGHT??

Wow, that was a trip.

I feel like this was better than I had any right to expect from the premise, but still felt like a B-grade horror movie. I like the tantalizing hints of what world-building we do get, and I think this novel is excellent fodder for future horror/Halloween fics. Otherwise, I’d skip this unless you are a “must read everything in Legends” purist, enjoy Sith shit, enjoy watching Sith die in horrific ways, and/or a diehard plant nerd like me.

RANDOM TRIVIA: Wookiepeedia says the first draft had a character named  "Middish Sunblade, modeled after Holden Caulfield, but Sunblade was removed from the rewrite because he was whiny and nobody could stand him," which is just too true and too funny for words. Also, an actually-in-character Holden Caulfield expy would last approximately 30 seconds at Sith Hogwarts before being stabbed... I’m just saying.

[atamascolily]

Lily reads Star Wars: Red Harvest (part one)

Red Harvest, by Joe Schreiber, came out in the later days of Legends, which explains why I've never heard of it. It's a prequel to Death Troopers (which I have not read), set several thousand years before the events of A New Hope, featuring no one we’ve ever heard of before or will again. I’m really fuzzy about Old Republic timelines, since that era doesn’t interest me, but this is clearly before the whole Rule of Two business given how many Sith are running around.

This book is the SW equivalent of a low-budget pulpy horror zombie film, with a hefty dose of the Taken films (starring Liam Neeson, which will become relevant) thrown in for good measure. It's fast-paced and gory, with an incredibly high body count, set on a planet that is part Hoth and part The Shining (both cited as influences on the Wook page). I

f this were on A03, the ratings would most likely be: Gen, Mature, Graphic Depictions of Violence, Major Character Death, but if you have any experience at all with the horror genre, you kinda knew to expect that, right? Except for maybe the lack of sex bit.

The plot macguffin is a space orchid, which is the entire reading I’m reading this book. I'm so predictable like that.

But the one absolutely BRILLIANT thing is that this book is set at Sith Hogwarts-- which is just as grim, wretched, awful, scheming, painful and abusive as it sounds like. We spend the first six chapters skipping from perspective to perspective, but it doesn't really change the fact they're all horrible people and scheming to murder and manipulate each other.

Which is why we the readers feel absolutely no remorse when the slaughter begins.

There’s dueling and mind control and bullying and all kinds of dog-eat-dog here, plus rumors about disappearing students that will later be proven to be 100% accurate. Also, world-building details like this:

He ate alone, as did most of the students, with his back to the wall as much as possible. There wasn’t much talk, just the steady clink of utensils and trays. When you were here, you powered through the meal as quickly as possible and got back to your training sessions, or study, meditation, and Force drills. Time spent socializing was time wasted—it showed weakness, a lack of discipline and vigilance that was practically an invitation to your enemies.

Like I said, a charming place. I don’t feel bad when it all goes up in flames.

The chapters are titled, which I don’t remember from previous Star Wars novels, but whatever. Most of the titles are pretty generic, but chapter three is title "Deep-Down Trauma Hounds" omg.

Whatever injury had been inflicted upon him, it was deep, and whole packs of nerve receptors—those obedient trauma hounds—were circling back and forth, busily delivering the bad news.

There’s a non-Sith mechanic who’s lazy and greedy, but maybe not actually evil, who greets a bounty hunter bearing a prize for headmaster Darth Scabrous. There’s also a HK droid acting as a valet, and the narrative acts as though I don’t know what HK stands for:

“Speaking of which, your boss better have the rest of the credits he owes me for this little beauty. It wasn’t exactly easy to procure.”

The HK responded promptly. “Answer: Payment has been arranged in full, sir. Rest assured that you will receive it shortly.”

I smell a double-cross in three, two, one... yup. It's bad, y'all. It's really, really bad, and the main reason is to build up Darth Scabrous so we know just how bad he really is.

Meanwhile...

Seventeen-year-old Mnah Ra’at stood in the center of the academy’s combat simulator, the one the students called the pain pipe, wiping the blood from his split and swollen lip. He felt no pain now, only a burning desire to attack and avenge what had been done to him. The fact that the damage had been inflicted by an automatic system as part of his training didn’t matter at all to Ra’at. He was angry, and his anger made him strong.

I feel the Shadow Academy ain't got nothing on this, but it’s been a while since I read Young Jedi Knights. Anyway, the nickname for the simulator is a nice touch. 

This is literally six chapters of awful people being awful to each other in all kinds of cruel and ingenious ways. No wonder Darth Bane developed the Rule of Two. Even HE was like "Enough is enough, I can only stand one of you little shits at a time”.

[atamascolily]

Lily reads Star Wars: Red Harvest, part five

This book summed up in one sentence: "Hello, naughty children, it's murder time.... specifically, YOUR murder!” *evil laughter*

In which the students at Sith Hogwarts meet something that’s even creepier than they are... and they like it. Some of them. For a bit. 

(If you’re just joining me, check out the “Red Harvest” tag on my blog for previous posts)

Cut to not!Qui-Gon, his cloak billowing in the wind. 

“You landed on the wrong world, Jedi.”

Trace turned and faced him directly. The man was a Sith Master; that much was readily apparent—perhaps an instructor at the academy.

Okay, fine, but how do you know that, Trace?? What does a Sith Master even look like? Is their a dress code? Is it his presence?? This explains nothing. But that’s totally in character, because Rojo Trace is a Jedi of few words and never explains anything.

“I am Shak’Weth, Blademaster here on Odacer-Faustin. I can only assume that you came here seeking humiliation and an unpleasant death.”

“I’m here on other matters.”

“Ah?” The Blademaster cocked his head slightly, looking marginally intrigued. “But you’ve found me instead.”

Their duel is interrupted by a zombie attack, allowing not!Qui-Gon to escape and the Blademaster to die a horrible death.

In case we needed the reminder, the Whiphid bounty hunter is also a horrible person, as Zo learns when she tries to read his mind:

Normally her telepathic abilities weren’t particularly strong when it came to non-plant life-forms, but the Whiphid was what she thought of as a relatively easy read. In fact, from within, his mind resembled nothing so much as the trophy room aboard his ship where she’d first awakened: a place of death, a de facto display space for grotesque trophies and old kills. Some were alien species that she’d never seen before. Others were human. All were brought together in universal expressions of pain, desperation, and helplessness that they’d worn as the bounty hunter had delivered the coup de grâce. His mind had become a storehouse of their dying moments. This crypt of suffering, this reliquary, wasn’t just what he carried around in his head every day—it was his head.

He does not take kindly to Zo poking around in his mind. Zo is freaked out because she saw Scabrous watching her in there, too. They take shelter in the Tauntaun stables (because this is set on not!Hoth), and it turns out that the bounty hunter is a softie for them. Then the animals start screaming and the lights go out.

It turns out the Sith students love being zombies. Who would have ever guessed.  

He saw it with two sets of eyes: the ones he’d had when he’d been alive, and the strange new vision that the Sickness had given him. On some intuitive level he understood that the first set was fading, going blind, and that was fine with him, absolutely fine. The Sickness had given him everything he’d hoped for, everything he wanted, power and strength beyond all imagining. It had altered the midi-chlorians in his bloodstream, telescoping his natural abilities, enhancing them exponentially.

...The newly dead were rising slowly, shuffling to their feet. Rising up with them, Lussk stared into their faces, faces that he recognized from the academy, now contorted into something utterly new. He felt no fear at the sight of them, no sense of foreboding—only a slick dark fascination.

I’m looking at my future, he thought, and shivered with anticipation. It was a good future, he realized, an endless future, a place of unfathomable possibility.

But there's a price. Of course there is.

The Sickness wanted his soul.

No, Lussk told it. It’s too much. Even for what you offer, even for immortality itself, the price is too high.

A Sith with standards? Say it ain't so!  

I will make you the last one, the Sickness promised. Of all the others, you alone shall endure. That is what I have to offer you.

No.

The Sickness paused within him, considering. That is too bad, it said finally, because you no longer have a choice in the matter.

Yeah, it doesn't go well.

Also, turns out the zombies have a hive mind because the Sickness is controlling them all. So that's creepy, too. I’m not sure how all this works because this isn’t the sort of book to go in for explanations and world-building mechanics, so we’re just gonna roll with it.

The remaining students find the inevitable secret Sith weapon stash. The one female Sith, Kindra, is about to murder the asshole of the group, who's trying to off her in a power struggle because she won't give him a lightsaber, when they get interrupted and... you know what, I'm on her side here (inasmuch as I sympathize with any of these characters).

The Big Bad orders the tree librarian to use Psychic Plant Power to pretend to be the orchid and lure Zo to the library and bites him when he doesn't immediately comply. Zo and the bounty hunter fight zombies, and it all seems hopeless, but Zo hears her big brother's voice in her memory, and it powers her up for a big fight scene in bullet-time.

The tree librarian goes mad and sets the library on fire because the bite is infected with the Sickness. It's super metal.

Old fool, it had said, foolish old creature, your life has been wasted here among your books.

The Neti had tried to respond, to tell it no, that these scrolls and texts were his life, but the Sickness hadn’t shown the slightest bit of interest in that. It had more to say, and the Neti realized that he was a captive audience.

It’s not too late, the Sickness said. I have given you new life, and a new purpose, and you will know it if you seek my face. Will you, old tree? Will you seek my face?

What is it? the Neti asked. What is your face?

Mine is the face of blood and fire.

... The flesh is our fuel, the Sickness counseled, and its voice was like thunder now, and the books are our fuel, and this planet is our fuel, all things are fuel, they exist only so that they can be consumed by us.

Yes, yes—

They are meat for the beast.

Yes.

And the beast is you.

Yes.

This is literally how the virus thinks about everybody and everything and that's absolutely terrifying.

The Sith students get attacked, again. Interesting tidbit:

only Sith Masters can use Force lightning, how—

A bunch of zombies get electrocuted by Force lightning when a Sith Master shows up to "help". One of the students get injured, and turns into a zombie and gets electrocuted by the master.

The bounty hunter abandons Zo because she wants to go to the library because she thinks she hears the orchid calling her (we know it’s the now-evil Tree Librarian under Scabrous’s orders). So he goes exploring on his own instead.

The students must have used this place, he thought—some wit had left a handmade sign painted over the entranceway. It read:

WELCOME TO THE PAIN PIPE

Tulkh looked around. It appeared to be some kind of training simulation chamber, a wide, high space full of elaborately machined devices that protruded from the floor and walls, even down from the ceiling—pillars, pinions, retracted coils, and battering rams. But that quick impression was all that Tulkh was able to absorb before the hatch burst open behind him, allowing the flood of bodies to come spewing into the space with him.

Not without a sense of the absurd, thought:

Teenage Sith zombies, Tulkh thought—how in the moons of Bogden had it all started? Every so often, the universe must just get bored and decide to really cut loose.

UNDERSTATEMENT OF THE YEAR. Especially ironic since none of this would have happened if Tulkh hadn’t brought the orchid here, but I guess he’s not in a position to appreciate that.

Anyway, he finds Scabrous's droid:

“You’re an HK model.”

“Confirm: A Czerka Corp HK series, yes, sir, but—”

“You know what HK stands for?”

“Response: It’s an industry term, sir, but—”

“Hunter-killer.”

The droid made a scandalized chirp. “Correction: Respectfully, you’re mistaken, sir. I am a protocol droid. Proficient in millions of galactic languages and—”

“Czerka built you special to get around local laws banning assassin droids.” Tulkh was gritting his teeth now. “Those flip shields over your eyes—that’s a combat modification. When Scabrous brought you here, he put a restraining bolt on you, but if I do this—”

He yanked the bolt off. There was a brief, hissing sizzle as the HK’s processor muzzle shorted out. Tulkh felt his skin tighten, his fur standing on end. He cast a grim look at the droid. “Remember now?”

Wait, so the HK droid didn't realize it was an assassin, it thought it was a protocol droid? OH MY GOODNESS, THAT EXPLAINS SO MUCH, and I totally didn't catch that earlier. Okay, this is gonna be good, and by good, I mean, incredibly violent and probably full of explosions. 

The asshole student wants to kill the one female student because he's an asshole. They make her strip naked to prove she's not infected, because they're assholes--only for the master to reveal he's been infected the whole time. The asshole dies, Kindra survives, and shanks the one other survivor so the zombies will get him and not her. #PowerMove. Zo is going to be the Final Girl, but Kindra's made it surprisingly far. I bet the librarian is going to kill her, though, because of that conversation they had earlier.

Meanwhile, Zo is looking for the orchid:

Tulkh had refused to follow her here, leaving her to go alone. When she’d confronted him about it and said, Let me get this straight, you’ll walk into a Sith Lord’s tower, but you won’t go into a library, he’d merely nodded and planted his feet, telling her that he knew a trap when he saw one.

#accurate, since Darth Scabrous is waiting for her in the library. He's a medical monstrosity, because his face is still falling apart, but the Sith alchemy is keeping the Sickness at bay--for now. (Or is it?)

[atamascolily]

Lily reads Star Wars: Red Harvest, part four

In which sentient plants offer excellent advice, but it doesn't help, and the zombie mayhem at Sith Hogwarts begins.

(If you’re just joining me, check out the “Red Harvest” tag on my blog for previous posts)

At Sith Hogwarts, we learn that the Big Bad is even more devious than we previously assumed:

Her name’s Hestizo Trace,” the Whiphid said. “She’s the orchid’s keeper. It needs her to—”

“Survive,” Scabrous said. “I know. That’s how I knew you were bringing me the genuine article.” He reached up and touched her face, his gloved hand cold against her cheek, like leather wrapped around an iron rod. “It was the one piece of information that I withheld about the orchid.”

PRO-TIP: DON'T DO BUSINESS WITH THE SITH. THEY *ALWAYS* CHEAT.

The Sith Lord nodded. “My droid will pay you on the way out.”

Time for another double-cross? That droid ain’t a HK for nothing...

Anyway, horrible Sith experiments follow using the orchid. Other Sith students spy and scheme. The student Scabrous tortured to death rises from his cage and breaks free. The zombie's first act is to bite off part of Darth Scabrous's face. Good for him, though it doesn't take.

Metal struck metal with a flat, declarative clang that reminded him somehow of the sound of training blades clashing at the top of the temple. It was a noise that said: Things have been put into motion, and whatever happens next, there will be no going back.

#accurate

More Sith students die, but it's hard to care because they're such terrible people. (Though we also learn that some of them were conscripted into the Academy, so they didn't necessarily start off as terrible people, but they sure are now!) I'm skimming a lot because it's all incredibly violent.

Zo escapes in the chaos. Darth Scabrous does some awful Sith alchemy to keep from turning into more of a monster than he already is. Zo eavesdrop on the Sith masters explaining to the students that it's just another Tuesday:

Zo realized as she listened that she could hear a slight but unmistakable tremor of concern in the Master’s tone. He was doing everything he could to cover it up, and perhaps the students were fooled, but to her mind he might as well have been wearing a placard: I’M DOING MY BEST TO SPIN A SITUATION THAT I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO ABILITY TO COMPREHEND, LET ALONE CONTROL, AND—

The orchid talks to Zo and warns her of trouble, but it doesn't help. The bounty hunter shows up again and grabs her before the infected students do. Cliffhanger!

Meanwhile, we meet a Sith nerd who just wants to translate secret Sith scrolls for Ultimate Power--who is also the only female student we've seen thus far. There's a sentient tree librarian in a crumbling library and I'm here for it.

“Something unsettling you, Kindra?” His voice was thick and raspy. “Some uncertainty of the mind, yes?”

“No.”

The librarian didn’t respond, just continued to slither his branches downward until the great bulk of his trunk dangled upside down in front of her, the warty, centuries-old eyes narrowing with myopic consideration. Dail’Liss had been the curator of the library for as long as anyone could remember, perhaps going back a thousand years or more. Although his elaborate root system was permanently embedded somewhere deep in the foundation, a seemingly endless network of branches and limbs allowed him to slide unimpeded through its walls and hollows. Ironically, it was this constant writhing and squirming that undermined the infrastructure of the building itself. Rumor was that it would only be a matter of time before the Neti brought the library down on top of him, sealing himself forever amid his own precious holdings—a fitting enough end, when Kindra thought about it.

“Look.” Kindra shook her head, increasingly irritated by the librarian’s evasiveness. “Either you have answers for me or you don’t. Either way I’m not going to stay in here and hide.”

“Best course of action, I would say.”

Tree!Librarian is right. She's not going to survive is, she? But I'm still kinda rooting for her, if only because everyone else is so awful in comparison. We haven't seen Kindra doing anything evil yet, but I'm sure she has, if only because she's still alive in this place and kindness is anathema to baby Sith.

The Tree!Librarian also doesn't seem evil... yet? How did he get here? What's his deal and why? I am so curious and this is all the backstory I'm getting, which is to say, almost nothing. Sigh.

One of the students gets bitten. His arm starts rotting.  This Is Fine.

“Something’s wrong.”

“Meaning what?”

“I’ve got a bad feeling.” ...

“About what?”

“I don’t know—this night, everything. You feel it?”

“Nope.” He shook his head, feigning an indifference that he didn’t even remotely feel. “Just another day in paradise, as far as I’m concerned.”

LOL, irony.

More zombies. More attacks on Sith students. Chapter Twenty is called "Lockdown" and I just can't even. Most of the Sith students are literally locked in the cafeteria with their ex-colleagues, and then the bloodbath starts. They're using the Dark Side to fight the zombies. It doesn't go well.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, this whole premise is fucking genius, because again, everyone at a Sith Academy is a horrible person doing horrible things in their horrible gothic nightmare castle, so it's hard to feel bad when they are horribly murdered by horrible Sith zombie alchemy monsters. It just feels like Laser-Guided Karma.

Shit just got real because Not!Qui-Gon arrives at the Sith Academy. The mechanic who greeted the bounty hunters is now missing, presumed dead It's tough to be psychometrist when everything you touch generates visions of violent death.

Meanwhile, a handful of surviving Sith students team up, kinda:

Ra’at held Maggs and Hartwig in the same regard that he did the rest of his classmates, with a kind of suspicious indifference. Their motives were purely selfish, as were his; he had no intention of sharing information that didn’t somehow improve his own situation. At this point they all knew something had gone very wrong, contaminating the academy or the entire planet; for the moment they were allies of opportunity.

These Sith can't even work together long enough to survive the crisis. No wonder the Jedi eventually kicked the Siths’ collective asses through the Power of Friendship.

Here, have some conspiracy theories along with your nightmare fuel:

“We all feel something kind of bad in the air, right? Like maybe some kind of a … disease. But who’s to say it’s not just one of Scabrous’s drills?”

Kindra’s eyebrows went up. “Excuse me?”

“For all we know he started this himself.”

“Why?”

“Maybe it is a training exercise,” Maggs put in. “Or maybe he’s culling the weak students. It’s happened before. Remember the unakki eye spiders?”

“This is worse,” Kindra said.

“Don’t be so sure,” Hartwig said. “Eleven students went blind. Two of them died. Remember Soid Einray?”

“Soid Einray was a defective already.”

“Maybe, but he still hung himself afterward. And then we found out that Scabrous had reactivated the fertilized spider eggs from the pathogen bank as a nerve-reflexivity drill.” Hartwig refused to lower his stare. “I still wake up with blood in my eyes sometimes.”

Just another day at Sith Hogwarts, am I right? What a terrible place.

Ra’at began concentrating solely on himself and his own survival, forgetting all the others. The Masters at the academy had trained them to fight as a unit when necessary, but a Sith warrior’s true strength lay in his or her own personal will to power. When you could trust no one, fighting alone was axiomatic, a natural state.

Flattening himself to the wall, he felt the Force’s dark side coursing through him, a crackling electric chill that rendered fear and apprehension obsolete, and welcomed it. In that moment, he felt only a ready vigilance, weightless and unrelenting. Since arriving here on Odacer-Faustin, it was the closest to happiness that he dared let himself experience. Yet in so many ways it was superior to any happiness he’d ever encountered. It made traditional happiness look anemic by comparison.

The POV Sith students watch the cafeteria zombie attack on the security cameras, and realize what they're up against. Meanwhile, Zo is also realizing how much trouble she's in, and the orchid is having a breakdown:

They can’t be killed, a voice whispered from the back of her mind, they’re already dead, look at them. At first she thought she was hearing her own thoughts, and then she realized it was the Murakami orchid, roiling in its own guilt and misery, yammering out words that she alone could hear. Dead but alive, Hestizo, dead but alive, I did this to them, it was my fault, when Scabrous put me into that horrible vat, and now I’m inside them—

Poor orchid. I really like that it isn't evil and is just as horrified as Zo about all this. I’m still not sure how that’s possible, or what actually happened, but that’s okay, because none of the character do, either!

Zo is about to be eaten by the zombies, but then--

I’ve got an idea, she told the orchid. Grow.

What?

You’re in them now, she said, aren’t you? You’re a part of them. You said so yourself.

The orchid does, and the zombies explode through Plant Power.

She concentrated harder—she could actually see the flora growing inside the things now, driving it harder, farther, faster from within, even as the orchid began crying out, begging her to stop, telling her that this hurt, it couldn’t do it anymore—

A lot of screaming follows. But it does work. Once. And then the orchid passes out and... becomes evil? Oh, no, I hope not. Turns out the bounty hunter is still alive, and she's working with him now to survive, like you do. I bet he’s regretting his life choices right now, too.

At that moment, Scabrous had assumed that what he’d seen was a kind of exaggerated nervous twitch, a biochemical accident that the drug and the orchid had triggered inside Nickter’s body. But now—

I wasn’t kidding when I said nobody knows what’s going on; not even the Big Bad has any idea of the forces (ha!) he’s unleashed. He determines that Zo is fleeing for the library, and prepares to trap her there. Will not!Qui-gon get there in time?

Spoiler: not quite.

[irrfahrer]

👾what was my muse’s childhood bogeyman?

Character Flaws Meme ! Flaws. We all have them. Even our muses. In fact, they often make for better, more engaging characters. Send a symbol to learn about one of my muse’s weaknesses!

Ziv had been a very curious child, or to be more accurate, she was obsessed with proving her worth and seriousness infront of her Clanmembers so she would stop beeing handled as if she was the smallest and sickest between the other children that needed to be looked after. Which she as a sickly runt with albinism and on a planet that was not her homeplanet, very much was and the tender and loving care her Clanmembers gave her was very fitting for her fragileness. Accordingly Ziv spend her time either learning, training or learning even more in the Halls of Healing and whens he had been in the Archives she very often ended up getting her paws on Holobooks that should not be read by the small pup she had been and one of those books had been the reports of Hestizo Trace in whos footsteps Ziv would walk decades later as a warden of a Murakami Orchid, although under very different circumstances. Of course reading about the outbreak of a Zombie-plague that is not defeated but simply quarantined in a planet is not exactly something a child should read about, not because she could not stomach the truth as the Tynnan had always been a Healer and knows that people die, even gruesomly die in som cases. But because the motives of Darth Drear and Darth Scabrous go against everything Ziv had been taught since she had been able to learn- she knew as a Healer and as a Youngling in the JediTemple that everything would die and she had learned to accept that at a young age, so reading that people feared the uninviteable possibility of dying so much that they would not only try to become immortal but do so by investing their lifes and the lifes of others- making apprentice work until death of exhaustion to build a temple, use sentient beeings for experiments, haunt a Jedi for sacrefice, infecting oneself with a sentient sickness, set this sicknss free on the population of a whole planet and with that murdering hundreds of people to prolong one life, ones own life, are ideas and fears that would have never entered Zivs mind. The shadows of those ideas stayed in a mind that had been too young to properly process them and her mind trying to process it drooped into her dreams in her sleep, poisoning her nightmares for years to come and motivating her obsessively in trying to become a Healer goodenough to make sure noone else would ever feel the need to far death so much as Darth Drear. DRears story however sticked to Zivs life like a curse and would follow her through the rest of her time in the Galaxy.

[irrfahrer]

Wookiepedia on Odacer-Faustin

Read the Original Texts Here, Here, Here , Here, Here and Here!

Region: Outer Rim Territories

Sector: Esstran Sector

System: Odacer-Faustin System

Grid Coordinates: Q-5

Odacer-Faustin was a planet with a cold harsh terrain. Heavy snow and high winds constantly buffeted the world. It was home to a Sith academy during the Cold War. The academy was founded by Darth Drear, an ancient Sith Lord whose power was unmistakable. When the academy was created, Darth Drear built a Sith temple underneath the library, which contained scores of ancient Sith lore. Later, he hid his holocron in the temple. Another feature of the academy was the enormous, black tower that was the central point of the academy. It was here that Darth Scabrous kept his secret laboratory on the very top of the tower. Nobody at the academy knew about the temple or the holocron except Scabrous and the Neti librarian, Dail'Liss. Darth Scabrous unlocked the secrets in the holocron, which held the secrets to eternal life. This holocron contained a formula and a list of ingredients to create an ancient Sith potion that granted immortality. However, this potion killed the subject first, then turned them into a ravenous, cannibalistic zombie.

Sith Academy The Odacer-Faustin Sith academy was one of several Sith academies in operation during the Great Galactic War and the Cold War. The institution was originally constructed by Darth Drear, but was overseen by Darth Scabrous during the reign of the Sith Empire of the post-Great Hyperspace War era. At the center of the academy sat Darth Scabrous's tower, which was adjacent to the academy library. The academy fell into chaos when the entirety of its Sith Lord staff and student body fell victim to a virus that transformed them into undead cannibalistic monsters.

Darth Scabrous's Tower Darth Scabrous's tower was a massive, black structure that dominated the Odacer-Faustin Sith academy on Odacer-Faustin. The Sith Lord Darth Scabrous resided within the tower, wherein he practiced dark experiments into Sith alchemy. It was within the tower that he created The Sickness—a virus capable of killing living flesh and subsequently reanimating it. The tower was partially destroyed in 3645 BBY, when its uppermost levels were blown away by Scabrous's security turbolasers stationed on the academy grounds.

Academy Library The Odacer-Faustin academy library was a massive building on the grounds of the Sith academy on Odacer-Faustin. The structure was built by the Sith Lord Darth Drear, and housed a Sith Temple within its lowest reaches. After Drear's death, the Neti librarian Dail'Liss adopted responsibility for the library, protecting its secrets and hoarding its treasures.

Dail’Liss Dail'Liss was a Neti male Sith and the librarian of the Odacer-Faustin Sith academy. He spoke with a strange accent, in which he pronounced "yes" as "jess", and he served as caretaker of the academy library after the death of Darth Drear. He was the only person that knew about the research of Darth Scabrous, due to his knowledge of Darth Drear's holocron. Dail'Liss survived for a long time while the infection known as the Sickness ravaged throughout the academy, staying secure in the library. However, the Neti was eventually infected by Scabrous himself. Darth Scabrous used Dail'Liss to lure Hestizo Trace into the library by mimicking the voice of the Murakami orchid, still alive amidst the Sickness. The plan worked and Hestizo was captured by Scabrous. Meanwhile, Dail'Liss began to succumb to the Sickness, and in his maddened state, he started burning all of the library's scrolls and holobooks. He was found by the Jedi Rojo Trace, Hestizo's brother. After being captured by the Neti and seeing his memories of his discovery of the Sith Temple beneath the library, Trace was able to escape and go after his sister.

Turbolasers The turbolaser was the immensely scaled-up version of the blaster and laser cannon. These weapons were generally mounted on rotating turrets, which were commonly installed in banks on capital ships, space stations and orbital facilities. Some immobile variants, like those housed within defense towers of the city of Iziz, were used on the ground. Agrocite, an extremely rare ore that was found only on Khorm and Simocadia, was known to greatly enhance a turbolaser's destructive power. Mirkanite was also used in the production of heavy turbolasers.