#this brought to you by atton's description of the force

[k-she-rambles]

Because I cannot just let this go: KOTORxSongmaster AU

Warnings for war, mentions of genocide, medical abuse, depression, vague implications of past assault (Atton is your friend but uh, he is not Nice), characters who don’t want to talk about sex talking about sex/infertility/impotence (it’s the repression paradox: the Forbidden Topic is talked about a lot because it’s Forbidden) and fantasy ableism. It’s Orson Scott Card. There’s Awesome and Ehh... NB: this is not how puberty blockers work IRL. I’m pulling things both out of my tuchas and from a work of fiction.

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It takes the Exile hours to realize what is distracting her, but also warning her of approaching droids, this foreboding that has burrowed under her skin.

She can hear the Peragus mining facility singing.

The creak of metal, the sizzle of lasers, the klaxon of the alarms. The oppressive silence that is more than the silence she is used to. And below that, fear.

It has been five years since she has heard anything sing.

§

(The Exile hears no songs.

She is not deaf, in the peculiar way the Songhouse reckons deafness –-not as the quality of being unable to hear with your ears, but being unable to hear your own nature, sung.

But it is not just herself she cannot hear.

The Exile hears no songs.

It is as if the universe and everything in it is dead. When Master Vrook speaks, she cannot hear what he really means, below the dry bluster. Kavar’s tone is neutral in a way that is entirely different from his Control. Atris’ voice has a song like bright wind over snow, but only in the Exile’s memory. When she speaks, it’s only a voice.

The Songmasters sing Malachor. They sing warmongering, betrayal, the Dark Side, and over all, loss. The Exile only hears it in a recording, years later: the loss of music meant the loss of songtalk.

At the last, the Exile ignites her lightsaber, and drives it into the stone. The sound is empty, empty, empty.)

§

Kreia’s Control is incredible, and so it is always gratifying when she reveals something of herself. When she speaks, she never uses songtalk.

Come to think of it, Atris doesn’t either.

§

It’s the holos of Malak as a Sith Lord that bother the Exile the most.

It isn’t that he was the first padawan to show her around the Jedi Songhouse enclave on Dantooine when she arrived. He took himself too seriously, even as a child, but he was kind. He asked her the questions the adults hadn’t thought to, and answered, unprompted, the questions she was afraid to ask.

It’s his jaw. Malak was a songbird, though the songmasters never placed him out. (It was always Malak who was the songbird, not Revan, who grew into her voice only as an adult.)

But the horrifying idea of Revan taking a songbird’s natural voice away isn’t it either. It’s that the Exile doesn’t believe for a second that it was to teach him a lesson. It’s easier to believe that Revan loved him, and that changes things, morphs the horror into pity for them both.

It it so wrong, she catches herself thinking, the impulse to silence a song that is in agony? To hear the pain which you have caused, and make it stop?

§

“Soo...” says Atton, nudging a broken piece of droid with a toe. “Songhouse, huh?”

“Mm.”

“Must be hard. No family, no, ah --”

The Exile snorts. “Typical.”

“No? ‘Cause I heard--”

“The Songhouse is a family, Atton. When I was brought in I was adopted. Legally.”

“...okay, so how does an ancient, galaxy-spanning organization legally adopt a kriff-ton of kids?”

“Illegally.”

Atton smiles at that, and it’s almost honest. No teeth.

The Exile relents. “It depends. The other thing, I mean. Species, biological sex, whether they thought you’d be a songbird when you were adopted.”

He makes a vaguely interested noise.

She continues breaking down the blaster rifle in her hands. “Once the puberty blockers wear off, those who might have borne children generally find they can’t —hence the Songhouse’s aggressive adoption practices.”

“Oh. That’s not too bad, then.”

She looks at him coolly until he flushes, two spots of color on a face that might have once been tan.

Sallowed by dissipated living. A follower. Without someone to lead him all he is is appetite –-that is Kreia, in her mind’s ear. Had it not been part of her gift of the voice, the Exile might not have separated Kreia’s words from her own thoughts. True, Atton looks like he hasn’t seen sunlight or a nutritionally balanced meal in years, but there is...

You have no natural talent for healingsong, says Kreia sternly, but does not correct the Exile’s assumption.

Atton is still babbling. “Not that, uh, I’m in a position to say.”

Her laugh is a small huff of air. “It’s what I grew up with. They say Ancient Selkath doesn’t have a word for wet.” She tries to sing Modesty, and doesn’t even get as far as don’t stare before her voice cracks and the song turns to ashes in her mouth. Stupid. Like poking at a missing tooth. She’d never had a problem not trying to sing when she was traveling alone.

“I know that one,” says Atton. “I meant...the rumors get really uh, colorful. I was being stupid. Earlier, I mean. I was –I meant to be filthy but didn’t mean it to be nasty if it’s something you can’t—”

She puts down the rifle. “I won’t die if I have sex, Rand.”

Atton looks anywhere but directly at her. “Right. Stupid.”

§

After years of silence, the music is distracting. Eddies and curls, the ticks in the hyperdrive, T3′s gears, Atton’s constant mindless not-quite-spoken chatter. Bao-Dur doesn’t realize he hums as he works, but she can pinpoint his location, his mood, and a sense of what he’s working on anywhere in the ship.

“I will teach you Control,” says Kreia, and the Exile bristles. She is not a Bell or a Breeze, learning how to breathe, learning Control for the first time. But she keeps Control, and obediently sits down to meditate.

She tries to imagine a lake in the mountains, surrounded by the walls of her Control, and fed by the meltwater of her life, just as she was taught. It is the reservoir of her songs, released only when she chooses, not in tears, or sudden flights of passion.

She hasn’t done this in years. Who knows what that lake might contain.

The image won’t come.

“Let go of what ought to be,” says Kreia. “I am only interested in what you are.”

The deep lake has become...something else. A marsh, a bog. The sweet, thick smell of decaying plants feeding the living ones. There is a sense of wet, but there’s no sign of where the water comes from, and no sign of what makes it stay. It’s like nothing she has ever encountered. “Is that...good?”

“It is you,” says Kreia.

§

Years of doing everything but sing with her voice have left their mark. Lightsong and darksong both sound mangled, strained. Once, the Exile could fill a room with sound, to the edges and no farther, with no distortions. Now, she is lucky to hum a healing without her voice cracking.

She doesn’t exactly regret not keeping her voice conditioned –-she could have sung in exile, technically. Did, once or twice—sung a familiar tune for a drink or a job, sung a lullaby to calm a crying child.

She could not bear it for long: a tone-deaf stranger pulled from the street would still sing from the overflow of of the life they bore inside them. She does not.

There was nothing there. She sounded like a corpse trying to carry a tune, no matter how correct her notes.

She tells herself the song would have only sounded like Malachor, anyway.

§

Atton has Control.

There are hints of it on Telos, but —

No. Atton sings.

The realization hits the Exile like a ton of bricks. Atton sings. It is not the same as having a song, for all living things (and many things that aren’t alive at all) have a song. Atton sings: with his body, with his thoughts, keeping his mind and his hands and his mouth vacuously busy in ways that any songmaster would call “wasting your songs.” But he’s doing it on purpose. He lets those who listen, listen, but they listen to a tune of his choosing.

It’s a gift of the voice. They aren’t rare, but there’s no usual form they take, and so they can be mistaken for other talents. Revan had a gift with languages. Poor Bastila had been saddled with battle song in a time of war. The Exile herself had a gift: the ability to catch the thread of any song and the power behind it, to harmonize with anyone, of any skill.

§

Revan was quick to sing of herself. You never knew all of what was going on in Revan’s head, but you always knew who and what you were following.

§

(“If a place there is not for the songs to come out,” Master Vandar says in her mind’s eye, one of her earliest lessons as a padawan, “Drown you will in all the things you cannot express. Inflict them you will on others, without knowing them yourself. A grave affliction it is. Even Sith songmasters sing. Sing we must, even if the tone needs correcting. Our debt to the galaxy it is.”

“What happens to padawans like that?” Revan asked.

“A question, that is not,” said Vandar, “for so many young ears.”)

§

(Don’t tell Alek, Revan had sung, a rare concession to ignorance over knowledge. They’d given Revan a name, at the Songhouse. They called her after her favorite historical figure. They’d called her Fiimma, the one who had to know Ansset’s song, who’d changed the course of the Songhouse by disobedience, courage, love. (which one depended on who you asked) Don’t tell Alek.)

§

On Goto’s ship, Atton finally sings of himself in his own voice.

The Exile hears war, hears following Revan, even as she changed, because she was worth following. She hears death, hears killing, and hears the part of him that loves death, that loves killing.

Atton sings, and the Exile hears Control, perfect Control, the kind that takes all emotions in and gives back nothing genuine, nothing uncalculated, nothing of his. High walls, a deep lake, cold and remote. A place of the drowning of the soul.

And then the singer, his singer, the one who let herself be caught, the one who broke open his Control by force. She sang the love song as she died –as Atton killed her, singing it back without voice, singing it back with a knife.

The Exile sings back her shock, wordless: Only one Songmaster of the High Room on Coruscant in recorded history had ever dared such a thing as his singer dared, and never by force.

“I won’t say that it is not –-” Atton’s songs are raw and awkward things, coming from a spring he did not carve, flowing through him like water, like smoke. He would not sing at all except he must. It feels like weakness, a bleeding wound, like something of his was taken away, even if he doesn’t want it back. “You’re not wrong, but –-” He sings, wordless, and she understands.

Atton knows, then, what Vandar had eventually told her, told Revan: a singer with Control who does not sing is a shame. A singer with Control who cannot sing is already dead. Marked for death. His singer had broken her Jedi oaths to save a single life.

It is no wonder that Atton has had such an uneasy relationship with songs and singers.

He wants the Exile to teach him anyway. He could be a shield, a knife in her hand. He wants to be.

She knows where to start. I will never hurt you, I will always help you. Atton sings it with a ferocity that takes her aback. Love does not end.

§

The Exile’s breath control gets stronger, her tone more clear. She hears Nar Shaddaa, hears the Ebon Hawk. More, she can hear and sing her companions. I’m glad to have you with me, she sings, and Bao-Dur’s and Atton’s backs straighten, despite only having a rudimentary grasp of songtalk. Maybe we can be friends. (Maybe, hums Mira, but it is open to the possibility, less hostile than it was.) I care about you, not the ways you are useful to me, the Exile sings, and Visas frowns, as if she doesn’t understand, as if songtalk were not the first language of all Miraluka.

I am listening, the Exile sings to Kreia, Your songs are full of distortions, but I hear you.

“Do you?” Kreia murmurs, gratified.

§

“What if there are monsters in the lake?”

In her memories, the Exile can never remember which of the Breezes she was meditating with had asked the question. No name or face gives her comfort. Bastila, about to be graduated early into Stalls and Chambers because of her gift, and already using ego to mask her fear? Juhani, who had come to the Songhouse late, and whose mood swings made her songs tempestuous? Belaya? Yuthura?

She was not wise like Vandar, or kind like Kavar, or firm like Songmaster Vrook. She had only been in the latter part of Stalls and Chambers, then, taking advantage the privilege of older padawans to teach the younger. It prepared them for adulthood, when they had to decide what to do with grown-up voices. She still wished they would have asked Master Zhar.

But they had asked her, and they deserved her answer.

“The monsters are songs, too,” she said, after a moment. “The ones you are afraid to sing.”

She meant to say don’t be afraid. She can only guess what the young ones heard.

§

Visas’ Sith songmaster master would sometimes take her voice, preventing her from singing the grief of her dead world. He is a hungry silence, more anechoic chamber than man. He drains the music from whatever he touches, chasing the echo of death, feeding on songs cut short, ended, lost.

Visas rarely sings her own songs, now. She sets them aside in favor of others’ --the Exile’s, or the echo of Nihilus’ power. It is not quite as viscerally terrifying as Atton’s song of Control: Visas instinctively knew that Control and Song are hand-in-hand. She does not keep Control when she cannot sing.

It is why, perhaps, she hides herself away and veils her face: emotions are strange and wild things, when you are used to singing them.

The Exile teaches her all the exercises and songs she remembers from childhood, and thinks of the Songmasters, trying to lose themselves on Nar Shadda, on Dantooine, on Onderon.

She does not think of years spent being a ringing silence herself.

§

Mira hears songs of individuals over distance, hears the distortion of people who aren’t home.

The Exile hones her pitch, teaches her how to grasp the song heard faintly and amplify it, singing it back so that it can be heard and healed. She teaches Mira posture, courage, how to stand and sing in any situation, even when you cannot stand: feet rooted, alert spine, breathe out, not up. No fear.

When Mira reappears after the Sith tomb on Dxun, joking with Bralor in his own tongue, there is a sense of something finally settled, a rhythm finally found.

§

“What did you learn in your exile? Visas asks.

The Exile rolls Visas’ lightsaber crystal in her hand, thinks of the smells of decay and of growing things, of water soaking up from the ground. She presses the crystal into the Miraluka’s palm.

“It is something like you learned, I think. I am alive. Song or no song or song-deaf. I am still here.”

“You think that is a good thing?”

“Why?” says the Exile, lightly. “Have you changed your mind about me? Are you going to lead me in chains before your songmaster?”

Never. The note is short and sharp, but there’s something the Exile can build on, there. My life for yours.

If you are frightened, I’ll be your friend, the Exile sings. The love song.

Visas scoffs, not recognizing it. “I do not fear death.”

Neither do you wish to live, the Exile does not say. “But you fear mine?”

“I regret it. I would delay it, if I could.”

The Exile smiles. “Then you’ll just have to keep keeping me out of trouble.”

§

The Exile had hoped to never set foot on Dxun again. It’s just as loud as she remembers, even with her dulled senses. It is not just the jungle --the moon rings with the memory of death and mines and fire and water, even though the fighting has long ago stopped. It’s either the echo of what came before, or the silence, after.

“It’s hard to hear myself think sometimes,” says Bao-Dur, “But being around you helps.” And: “I’m glad you let that old warrior go. I’m not sure I would have wanted to do the same.”

“It’s not always about what I want,” she says, gently. “There has been enough death and hatred, I think. So I chose.” She runs a towel over her hair, uselessly trying to get rid of some of Dxun’s damp, and adds “You wondered how I made it through without my songs. You don’t have to hear the song to make a choice.”

§

“Her influence threatens the integrity of the other students’ music!” says the recording of Songmaster Vrook. “She is like Ansset, and could doom us all.”

“That is a myth,” the Exile growls.

“Ahh,” says Bao-Dur, observing her without judgment. “I’m pretty sure Ansset was a real person. Last of the Three Imperators and one of the founders of the Republic? Ring a bell?”

The Exile crosses her arms. “He was a Songbird first and last. One of our greatest. The stories say,” she says, drawing the last word out, “that he could change people’s songs, even without singing. Make them feel whatever he wanted. Make them become what he wanted.”

“Creepy,” says Atton, at the same time Bao-Dur says “You’re nothing like that.”

“No?” says the Exile, and Atton is not sure if she is angry, or if that is some kind of loss or hunger in her face, her eyes.

Atton scratches the back of his head. “Well, sure. You can harmonize with nearly anyone. Even Kreia. You said that was your gift, not changing the songs of others.”

“This Vrook person called you dangerous in the same breath as average and disliked,” says Bao-Dur. “Are you sure he has even met you?”

She exhales, a small laugh. “He never liked me.”

“Then he is letting his personal feelings cloud his judgment, and you have your answer.”

§

Mandalore is deaf to songtalk, but his awareness is exceptional. “Your teacher is a fine hand at blocks, Exile.”

The Exile starts. She hadn’t thought of that, despite how teaching her to hear the thoughts of her companions exactly resembled shifting a block.

“Is there anything --”

“I’m not a doctor or a singer,” he says quickly. “You’d know more than I. But no, I don’t think she has bound any of us with anything stronger than blackmail.”

But she could, if she was resisted, lays unspoken between them.

§

The Exile came home, with the singers who would become Revan and Malak, once, four months before the full council sanctioned the intervention that had been going on eight months already.

Eight months of the background noise of war, strategy, and troop movements.

There were children practicing in the courtyard. Stalls and Chambers, she guessed, most with their own lightsabers. They wore white tabards over their tunics.

One of them tried to catch her eye, aware of where she had been and brimming with questions. He was good at noticing patterns in music. She’d tutored him on using that skill to hearing the harmonies between people, to expand it further, outwards, and notice patterns on the large scale. “Sing with us!”

The Exile shook her head. She hadn’t needed Revan’s warning: she knew war had changed her songs. To sing with anyone younger than Singer would be to threaten the purity of their self-expression, Revan had said, so perfectly mimicking Vrook that both the Exile and Alek had doubled over laughing. Revan had meant it, all the same.

“I don’t think I should.”

Words were enough, with his keen hearing, or perhaps it was her gift combined with his, and there was a harmonic between them already. The padawan sang it back: took what he heard in her voice and expanded on it, sang you are a shield for us, even in your silence, you couldn’t just do nothing, you will do it because you can.

There was something new in his voice, a thread of determination backing up his joyful curiosity. Here was one who could see a threat to all he had ever known and still sing in the face of it.

But the echo of death rarely came to Dantooine, in those days. He’d never seen it. She had.

The Exile sighed, all caution made useless. “Your chamber-master is going to kill me.”

“What is Atris going to say?” he said, amused. “I chose to sing it, so it is part of my song now.”

§

“I don’t hear anything different,” says Vrook. There’s no lie in his voice. “Your voice is not as good as it was, and you still have no songs.”

“But I sing!”

“I can’t deny that I see the effects of music. You make sounds, and things happen. And yet it is difficult to believe.”

The Exile waits. Perhaps Vrook’s lack of affection for her will allow him to tell her something that Zez-Kai Ell and Kavar could not.

“I see that you wrap the songs of your companions around you, but can you sing me a song of yourself?”

“And influence your songs, Master Vrook?” says the Exile. Her Control holds her steady enough to give her space to wonder why the question made her afraid, and, because she was afraid, angry. “‘Corrupt the purity of your self-expression’ with something you were never meant to know?” If she sang of Malachor, like Ansset sang of his life when he returned to the Songhouse, would it be mercy or cruelty? Even in Ansset’s time, it had been a close thing, a knifeblade either way, and it had been the experiences of one man, one who had never known war.

She carries Malachor around her like a cloak. A thousand songs in agony, a thousand voices silenced at her order. It is foolishness to think she does not.

“Hmph,” says Vrook, but there is a grudging and temporary respect as he gives her one last lesson.

Kreia, on the other hand, is incensed. “What fool denies wisdom offered to them? The tree that does not lean into the wind, does not withstand the storm. This planet and it’s people have seen pain, and is he processing it, or his own? Pah! He is ‘keeping his songs pure.’ And you,” she says, rounding on the Exile. “Do not think you are protecting anyone by your silence. They will learn or they will break.”

§

I’m sure I know you, the Exile sings, from behind the Disciple.

“I am sure I just have one of those faces,” he responds.

“That was songtalk.”

The Disciple turns around, his expression wry. “So it was. You do remember me.”

§

She does remember the padawan in Stalls and Chambers who sang her own song back to her, and he remembers her.

“The music, that is easy to forget,” he says. “With no need for Control to store your songs, and no need for singing. The stone of the Songhouse is my childhood home, my foundation, but when I grew up became a soldier, not a singer.” And: “The songmaster I would have chosen, the one meant for me, was lost.”

Lost, not dead. Her decisions had echoes she had not accounted for. “I’m sorry.”

“It wasn’t all bad,” says the Disciple. He gestures to the rubble around them. “I left the Songhouse before all of this. I had skills the Republic could use. Besides, I had already begun to have doubts when the Songmasters couldn’t hear the purity of your intentions. I did not want to be a part of the Songhouse if it would punishyoufor doing the right thing.”

“Purity of intentions does not mean I did the right thing,” says the Exile. “It’s easy to lose sight of what the right thing is in war.”

His amused smile hasn’t changed at all, nor his habit of hearing what she won’t say. “It would not kill you to admit that you have definitive opinions on the justice of your sentence.”

“Do you still wish to come with me?”

“I do.”

She takes his hand. “Will you sing with me, Mical?”

§

She finally gets a long conversation with Kavar.

It is good to see a friendly face.

He says much of the same things Vrook had: that her songs are a casualty of the war; that mortality is not conducive to song. His song is placid, calming. He is not lying, but he is not telling her everything, either. I can wait, the Exile thinks.

No. It is what Kavar is singing. You can wait. All things in time. The threat will reveal itself in time.

Not everyone has that luxury, Songmaster, she sings. Some who think they do, do not.

“How do you know what would have happened?” he counters. They are definitely not just talking about whatever is hunting Jedi. “Do you see what was lost because of Revan’s recklessness. Yours?”

“Do you not think I know what I did? Do you not think I carry it with me?”

I know you do, he sings. The apology is genuine, but it is as much apology as she is ever going to get. There is a sadness there, too, as if she has failed to learn something vital.

“The future is in flux and the past is a song already sung,” says the Exile. What’s done is done.

“Oh, my dear,” says Kavar. “Nothing is ever done.”

§

Someone, it seems, either in the Songhouse or in the Republic army, has taught the Disciple how to lay and remove blocks, and with his reopened connection to his songs, he is quickly combining the two, to devastating offensive and defensive effect.

In time, she thinks, the others will seek him out, let him sound out the shape of their minds, and make sure there are no nasty surprises there. Ask him to lay a few blocks of his own, against horror, against paralysis and confusion.

Well, she thinks. Everyone but Atton, who dislikes the Disciple, blocks, and people who deal in them.

§

“A word, songmaster?” says the Disciple.

She steps into the medbay.

The Disciple places his hands behind his back, but not before she can see that his hand is injured. “It’s about our pilot.”

Wonderful.

“He was asking some rather pointed questions, and I --” he clears his throat. “What I mean to say is that I’ve been away from the Songhouse long enough to know what is and is not my business.”

The Exile hums her confusion.

Mical shifts his weight onto his right foot slightly, and back again, a strange break of Control, for him. “For all that Atton’s ignorance of Modesty is startling, his song for you is-- what I mean is that there will be no back-singing from me, songmaster.”

The Exile pinches the bridge of her nose, comprehension finally dawning. Were they in the Songhouse, they would have never broached this subject. “Are you expecting a thank you?”

The Disciple lifts his chin, but blushes.

§

After that, it’s not entirely a surprise when Atton wanders into the cockpit with a cold pack over his eye --kolto is too valuable to waste on inter-crew spats. He waves off her hands when she takes off her gloves and reaches for him. He sits, and hums his own healing, looking pleased with himself when it works.

“All right,” says the Exile. “What happened?”

Atton looks sheepish, the mirror to Mical’s blush. “Uh. You remember the question I asked you, when we first met? About growing up Songhouse?”

“...yes?”

“Well you didn’t answer it all the way. You said how it worked for you, and said it was different for others. So I asked Mical.”

Sithspit. She stares at him. Asking questions, Mical had said. A startling ignorance of Modesty. Mical was trying to be gracious. “You deserved that.”

“Yeah. Well. I know that now. Matter of fact, I now know a whole hell of a lot of things I didn’t need to know, because after punching me in the face on principle, and explaining why you never ask a Songhouse kid that question, Mical treated me to a very nice lecture on the science of pain receptors and their connection to hormones, all the drugs you and he are allergic to, and a graphic theory on what happened to Darth Malak’s face. Which I really did not need to know.”

He has a point. “Sorry.”

Atton leans back, bracing his feet against the bottom edge of the control panel, and putting his hands behind his head. She knows better than to think he’s actually relaxed. “Why’d you answer my questions the first time, anyway? I probably would have wound the Disciple up about it, just to be an asshole, but I do like to know how much of an asshole I am before I really commit.”

“I don’t know,” she says, honestly. There’s no answer that she wants to give that is satisfactory: they either say too much or too little.

“I’m sorry. That those things happened, I mean,” he adds, when she raises an eyebrow. “To you, to Mical, to kriffing Darth Malak and Revan, even. Family should make you stronger, not...not limit your choices like that.”

“Ancient Selkath doesn’t have a word for wet,” she reminds him, softly.

“I know that,” he says, pulling his feet down from the ledge. “That doesn’t mean that wet didn’t actually exist.”

She is going to have to think about that one.

“Really makes me think, though. I’m not sure that I’m comfortable joining the Songhouse, if this...you know, big on bodily autonomy, me.” The last part twists, discordant, both truth and lie.

The Exile sighs. “I was disowned when they cast me out, Atton. If you want to join the Songhouse, you’re going to have to ask someone else.”

He snorts at that suggestion. “Not likely.” His clothes rustle as he squirms in his seat, crossing his arms and looking away. Rather follow you, he adds, singing so softly that the Exile can’t be sure if he sang with his voice or his mind. “Besides,” he says, louder, a bit too rapidly, “pretty sure they’re going to have to welcome you back, anyway. They’re a few singers short of a full chorus, and you’re the only Jedi Singer I’ve met with any sense.”

“Har, har,” she says, nudging his seat with a toe. “You’re right, you know. If the Songhouse survives all this, things will have to change.”

Atton swallows. “You know,” he says slowly. He still doesn’t look at her. “You know. If it’s worth anything, the Disciple told me he cleared all his medical checks when he left the Songhouse. You couldn’t hurt him. Unless you were into that, I guess.”

The Exile opens her mouth. Closes it. “Atton –”

“Don’t make fun. Kid’s got a heart like a star and the song in it is yours. Kriffing annoying, but if you haven’t heard him, you haven’t been paying attention.”

She throws her gloves at him and flees the cockpit.

§

The so-called Lord of Pain wraps himself in music, is barely anything besides song stitched together with veins of Control. He is loud, too much. He makes the Exile’s bones ache. Silence, she sings, breath, darkness.

Life without song, he sings. Impossible. Death.

Not death. Something else.

There is nothing else. Only hunger, only void. I do not wish to die.

You are not at peace.

Are you?

§

“Were you Revan’s teacher?” the Exile asks.

“Revan had many teachers,” says Kreia.

The Exile waits.

Kreia looks at her a long time, and then opens her mouth and sings Revan.

At least, as well as Revan can be sung by someone who isn’t Revan herself. Her song always lent itself to being projected upon by others.

It is answer enough.

§

Malak sings action over the Jedi Council’s inaction. Malak sings of the Mandalorians, sings rumors of death on the Outer Rim, sings innocents in danger, sings the Republic asking for help and finding none.

Outrage, sing the singers on the Exile’s left and right. War.

War, sings Malak. War. Outrage. The Songhouse has failed.

Illusion, sings the Exile. The figures on her left and right ignore her. Malak looks at her with a twinkle in his eye.

She’d forgotten what a pompous bastard he could be. “Alek, this is not the song we sung.”

Something had to be done.

“That’s true. But we set out to save the Republic, not throw down the stones of the Songhouse.”

Malak smiles at her, as if he knew she would agree with him, eventually. “You know that was never Revan’s desire. If you had heard what Revan heard...”

“If I had heard what Revan heard, I wouldn’t be here,” the Exile snaps. She hears the truth in it as she says the words. “If I had been following Revan, and not myself, do you think she still would have chosen you over me?”

She’s made him angry now, the line between memory and vision blurring. “They will remember me, little sister. They will not remember you.”

The Exile closes her eyes. Opens them. “I decided that Revan would not arrive with reinforcements. And so I closed the trap. I destroyed the Mandalorians. I destroyed my own forces. I won the war. But Revan delayed. I was loyal to the cause, not to her. I wasn’t intended to survive. I know that now.”

What Revan had heard had altered her song, even as it remained wholly hers, like hearing Ansset’s had changed little Fiimma’s.

Revan had not been able to hear the change.

“I don’t have to justify myself to you, Malak. I don’t have the luxury of saying I did what I was told, or that I was hoodwinked, somehow, by Revan’s charisma. I chose, and I can’t change the past. But my choices were not your choices. My reasons were not your reasons, nor should they be.”

“Wake up,” says Malak, almost pitying. “You have to wake up.”

You were going to be the songbird of Taris, Alek, she thinks. What was it that tipped the scales? Following Revan to Korriban? What Revan found in the wreckage of Malachor V? What happened after the Mandalorian War ended? Where did you go?

She ignites her lightsaber and grits her teeth, staring the illusions in the eyes.

She loses.

§

She hears the fear in the voices of her soldiers, and thinks she understands. “Let me go up, Captain.” I will do it. I will do it. Her voice cracks. She remembers the loyalty of her soldiers, the songs she had with them. Dxun was full of life, just as it was full of death.

She disables the mines by hand.

Was it wasted? Her soldiers ask. Did it mean something, in the end? Did we matter?

§

“I can’t. I won’t.”

Apathy is death, sing the illusions, a drone that rattles her bones.

The Exile almost drops her lightsaber.

Refusing to die is not quite the same as choosing to live, but she wouldn’t call it death. A stupor, a blindness, a sleep, part infection and part choice.

Kreia was right to ask if she’d found what she was looking for among the dead. Mical was right to chide her about sidestepping. It had been so easy to not to care, not to matter, not to remember that at the core of her was cold Songhouse stone, warmed by many hands.

Had she always been strong enough to bear it, or is she stronger, now?

How does this song end? asks the illusion of Kreia. The illusion uses songtalk where Kreia would not. The effect is unsettling. “Either you conclude it, or the echoes go on forever, unfinished.”

§

There is nothing in a dark nexus that you do not bring with you.

She crosses blades with the apparition of what she might have become, had she truly been Revan’s left hand as Malak was her right, and thinks it again, a mantra: There is nothing in a dark nexus that you do not bring with you.

She has always been able to sing in the face of death.

There is nothing in a dark nexus that you do not bring with you.

So what is this? She ducks her own blade and makes a run for it. She can’t keep her breath enough to sing.

Of course she’d seen the changes in Revan and Malak. She’d seen the changes in herself. But she had set her face long before Malachor: she had always intended to present herself for judgment. She had broken faith with the Jedi Council, and she believed she was right to do so, but such actions always had consequences.

She would not have followed Revan into the outer reaches of the darkness. She already had followed her to Dxun, to Malachor V, and through the nothing beyond. There has to be something she is not seeing.

The eyes of the specter are empty. There is no song in her, though her songs are as solid and cool as stone.

It is frightening, in an abstract way, but the Exile finds herself oddly detached from the fear. As if this battle is familiar.

There are no songs for this.

It is time to go home.

§

She hears the Disciple’s confession, and it occurs to her that Mical is angry. Angry in the same way that Atris was angry. Atris chose not to follow, and Mical had been too young to. That for all his Control, for all that he thinks and thinks and thinks, turning his problems over in his mind note by note, his sunny disposition is fought for, and won.

Mira calls Mical a tame kath-hound.

She is right. May the fates help whoever tries to take what he defends.

“The Seeker who brought you to the Songhouse named you well.”

“Do you think?” says Mical, and the song in his voice is bitter. “I always thought it was cruel. Someone who doesn’t look like much, named after the Emperor of the Galaxy. Mikal the tyrant.”

“Father Mikal,” says the Exile, gently. “You are an historian. You know this.” History had recorded Emperor Ansset’s heir, Ephrim son of Josif, as the first Supreme Chancellor of the Republic, but it was a Republic that the tyrant had dreamed of. The Songhouse remembered: Mikal was the father of the Republic. The tyrant who loved the greatest Songbird in history as a son.

“Do you not think,” says Mical, slowly, “that you will make it through this?”

“Something is coming,” she says, finally. And then, pitching her song to cut through the ambient noise of the Ebon Hawk: I have given each of you all I can. The legacy of the Jedi is in your songs.

Bao-Dur snorts, softly. He heard the undercurrent of the song. She suspected he would. He closes a panel on Remote, and she hears the same tune back. He has been listening to her lessons with the others.

Mira nods decisively at something. Time to stop running.

Visas waits. It will come when it will come.

Atton slams a storage compartment, suddenly, inexplicably, and incandescently furious.

§

“Wait, General,” says Bao-Dur. The Exile turns, and words seem to fail him then, because he sings: hope and anger, weariness and rest, vengeance and choices, all rolled up into a question.

She considers him seriously, and presses an off-hand lightsaber into his palm. “Your choice, of course,” she says, lightly, warmed by his trust, his faith. “But you’ve always seemed to thrive on the impossible. If you think you can defend the innocent with song, without malice against the enemy, then you can.” I believe in you.

Bao-Dur bows his head.

The Exile ignites her lightsaber. “Now, are you going to show me what you’ve learned from spying on everyone else, or are you going to stand there and let me lecture you?”

Bao-Dur laughs, his dry, quiet laugh so like her own, and it sounds like try me. “I’ll take practical experience any day.”

§

All she hears in this place is loss.

She takes off her armor, stashing it quietly in an anteroom just inside the door of the enclave. There is power running now, and she hears the fountains ahead, signs of human habitation. Signs of life.

There is an ache in her chest. She breathes deeply, slings a robe over her shoulders for the first time in nearly a decade. She is not part of the Songhouse, but she is a singer, and songmaster to other singers. She respects the wisdom of the Songmasters, but the near extinction of the Songhouse and her exile have made her a peer.

It is good to see things rebuilt. The green of growing things, the sounds of the fountains, the murmur of voices waiting for her.

But all she hears in this place is loss.

It is strange: conventional wisdom holds that grief unharnessed weakens song, but her heart is full to bursting with something indefinable. She could sing here, and shake the walls down.

She forges on, past the fountains. She does not hear Kreia follow her, nor Visas follow Kreia.

§

The Songmasters tell her of the gathering on Visas’ homeworld, of songs not just cut short, but emptied.

They’d seen an echo of something coming for them, and had gathered, thinking numbers might clarify the vision.

No, Atris had suggested numbers might clarify the vision.

It was Atris who had convinced the Republic to contact the Exile.

Atris, the historian, the archivist, who could not justify leaving her post and following her heart. Atris, whose song, in the Exile’s memory of their last encounter, spoke of bitterness. Atris who surrounded herself with Handmaidens who were deaf to song. To the changes in a song.

I was an historian, Kreia had said. I found more questions than the Songhouse could answer.

§

“Songmaster,” says Mical, turning back towards the dormitory. There is resolve in his tone. “It is not Kreia who has shaken you so.”

She gives him a level look, already seated on the meditation rug Visas bought for her on Onderon.

He tries again. “What did the Songmasters say to you?”

“The Songmasters are dead.”

“And Atris has betrayed us, yes. Songmaster.”

The Exile sits back. “Why are you here, Mical?”

“I was worried about you.”

“No, why are you here? I influenced your songs as a child. What is to say I’m not doing so now? Do you not wonder why you follow me?”

You are a parasite, spits Vrook in her mind’s eye. Forming bonds, leeching off the connections of others. Your gift of the voice has always given you undue influence over the minds of the young and wayward.

“I follow you because I believe what I heard from you all those years ago, songmaster,” says Mical. “I see with my eyes that it is still the case. I admire you. But the galaxy does not revolve around any one person, though any one person can dedicate themselves to defend it. You taught me that.”

The Exile fixes her gaze somewhere above his left ear. “At Malachor, it was –I assumed my songs were taken away, or that I was deafened by what I heard. But I stopped my own ears. The other side of my gift of the voice: if I can harmonize with anyone, I can also not.” She looks down, at the rug, at the decking. “I knew. I’d always had a knack for that trick. I pulled it on Revan once, right before a performance. I don’t remember why. Got the mother of all lectures from Songmaster Sunrider. But I knew, if I would have let myself remember.”

Mical sits in front of her, legs crossed. “You heard something you could not bear. To hear so much death at once would have killed you.”

“But to cut myself off from all song to stop listening? You can imagine the Songmasters’ reactions.”

Mical does not smile at this. “They thought you were the source of the echo of death that has followed us.”

“I am the bait. And I do carry something with me.” She looks away. “Malachor V is not gone. The song of the universe is suffering there, and I carry it, not as a cloak, but inside...”

It is like Mical cannot hear it. The Exile’s voice is empty. There is nothing of herself in it. What she has become is worse than what Atton was before: Her true song is the death of song, and the songs of others. She grows in strength from death, and from her companions. She uses her gift of the voice to sing what she hears, to sing her friends voices, their songs, to sing to the living. Everything in her song is chosen, gathered, borrowed, stolen. Not hers.

“And you think that is a matter of accident?” says Mical. “That you sing of life and living when you know also the songs of death and ending? That you spin songs from what you hear, and from the people who love you?”

She thinks of the twisted brightness around a black hole. She thinks of a bog, the water coming up from the ground, and the ground itself made of drowned plants. Death feeding life feeding death, on forever.

Mical nods, satisfied. “It is possible to be afraid of death, and so delay to make choices that will save more lives. That is why the Songmasters have failed where you have not. You know what it will take, and you are not afraid.”

“I am afraid.”

“But not of dying.”

No. Never of that.

§

She follows Kreia to Telos, to Atris.

The cacophony of darksong around her is unbearable. The Exile stops her ears and listens to the frightened woman in front of her instead.

She does not think to query the voices around her.

§

I have authored so much death, sings Bao-Dur. Let my song end saving something instead. I will die in a different way if I do not.

§

I do not fear, for in fear, lies death. I am not afraid to die, but no longer do I loathe my life. I ask you, finally, to forgive me for the path I took when I lost my way. It has taken time for me to return here. I’ve been stronger for the journey. What happens now shall not be done out of hate, or revenge, but for the sake of all life.

This body is a prison no longer.

Visas stands. “Let us go.”

§

“And so that is why you fight,” says Visas. “To prove Revan wrong.”

“Not Revan,” says Mandalore, rising.

§

Darth Nihilus is a hunger, a void with will, an eater of songs, a silence.

He dies like a mortal man in the end.

§

There is a place, the Exile knows, beyond all song. Beyond light, beyond dark, and in which there is nothing but oneself.

It is not this place.

The Exile stalks the broken surface of Malachor V. She stalks the halls of the Academy, the crucible Revan found and founded, a festering wound the Exile created. This is a place meant to break the innocent, to drive them to let go of song, or grow stronger in defiance. To change, or die.

She thinks of Atton’s songs, grown strong in spite of everything. Mira standing tall. Visas singing to herself of small pleasures. Bao-Dur surrounded by green and growing things. Mical, looking to the future clear-eyed and singing anyway. Mandalore’s steadiness. HK. T3.

She thinks of the echoes of Malachor V. Lives lost, future lost, a planet in agony, only held together by residual gravitic anomalies, the echo of the weapon that won the war.

(She can only hope Remote has found its way)

She will sing here.

She will shake the walls down.

§

She sends her students back to the ship.

Her face is set towards Trayus Core.

She does not notice Atton turning back.

§

“Wish I’d...never met you,” says Atton, and it sounds like I will always help you.

“You’re a damn liar,” says the Exile, trying to ignore the blood, trying to sort cauterized and uncauterized wounds, praying Kreia’s tutoring in healingsong will be enough. There’s nothing she can do for his eye, and likely not his arm either, but she was just fast enough and it is possible if any of them die today it might not be him. “You are never where you are supposed to be and you have always been a pain in my ass.”

“Ha-ohh, it hurts to laugh.” He reaches up a hand, and touches two bloody fingers to her cheek before it falls heavily back again. “At least I’m…good, good at it. Save...save your strength. Sion’s still out there.”

“He had better be,” the Exile growls. “You’re going to have a few dashing scars.”

“Liar. Was always ugly. Now my outsides...match my insides.” He hums and the song is his. Just his. “Thought I would never see...another face again. And then you were there again. Thought being a Singer was like breaking Control. Like giving up. But it made me more myself. You need to go.”

She’s aware that she is crying. She needs Control. “Don’t be a fool.”

“There are worse...things I could be.” His face twists. “Wish I could...have told her that. Sounds different...when you say it. Like you’re saying...something else.”

§

The Exile methodically weakens Sion’s Control.

In the end, he goes.

In the end, she sings Farewell for him, too.

§

Kreia hates Song, even as she sings, even as she knows that all living things have song, whether they hear it and sing it or not. Kreia loves the Exile, even as she tries to kill her.

§

You don’t have to hear the song to make a choice, the Exile sings, in a brief respite from whirling lightsabers. Life does not only consist of struggle. The answer to life’s betrayal is not silence. No silence is absolute. There is always something left. There are echoes. Nothing is ever done.

There is only yourself.

No. That which you cannot touch still exists.

§

I do not want your mercy, Kreia sings, though I thank you all the same. “I imagined this day, and wondered if you would offer. I wanted you to say those words. I did not imagine that I would lose the thread of all my desires and plans. That I would spurn my defeat. That in the end all I would want is for you to be complete.” You have been the best of them.

The Exile nods.

“Farewell, Exile,” says Kreia, and it sounds like the love song.

§

Atton leans against the doorway, a Jedi’s cloak shrouding the ruin of his arm. There’s a kolto patch over his eye again. The Exile listens, and hears the echoes of Mikal’s grudging acceptance that nothing short of sitting on the pilot’s still-healing gut wound would keep him from waiting.

Everyone is waiting.

“Mira said someone ought to see if you needed carried out,” he lies.

The Exile raises an eyebrow. From the way he’s swaying, she is the one who is going to be doing the carrying.

“Don’t just stand there, we have a bomb about to go off. And I see that look. I figure we have a long way to go to get to wherever we are going next. If you, you know, happen to need a pilot.”

§

The song of Malachor V ends, its echoes no longer unfinished. They are carried forward in the voices of the lives it touched; the memory of song.

§

I will never hurt you. I will always help you. If you are hungry Ill give you my food. If you are frightened I am your friend. I love you now. And love does not end.

[zippdementia]

Part 32 Alignment May Vary: The Beginning of the End

This is the post that will take us to the very final moment of the campaign of Tomb of Haggemoth. A year ago, I found this campaign by reading a number of forums online, looking for something adventurous and seaworthy to fill some time while I prepped Red Hand of Doom. I was originally looking for a simple set of one shot adventures with time gaps between them, but once I read the final room description in Haggemoth, I was hooked, and thus began a nearly year long side quest which has taken my players, moment by moment, up through the levels. Because we are nearly at the end and I want to catch up with them, I’m going to gloss some of the final level of this dungeon. The big events come at the end, and that’s where my focus will be.

To start us off, we found the dirge Tyrion sang for Samuel and Biggs, the fallen comrades of Twyin and Xaviee:

Homeward Bound:

A Dirge to Fallen Soldiers ​Bright shines the sun over the morning crest, A scattering of rays glistening as sparks in the valley below. The soldier’s arms capture the light, imbuing them with the power of the stars. ​Humble mortals, handed the keys of greatness.

​The road home, the road home! Always out of sight around the corner. ​The singular soldier wanders a quiet path Which always leads home. ​Whether above the ground, or below.

​We call their names, Biggs! Samuel! Their presence the eager tear through the dark. ​With them, we feel keenly their passing. ​Without them, we’d feel nothing at all. ​The soldier’s life holding true to burden.

​For no soldier stands alone. ​Each is a brother, in a line of brothers For whom the plight of a one is a plight of all. ​A wolf pack! A pride of lions! An army of ants! ​One should fear the gathering of these men against them.

​We bid farewell this day to two brothers in arms. ​Without you, we must carry on. ​Our homes aboveground lie, Our battles not yet ended. ​But Samuel and Biggs have found their home, here. ​And take thy rest.

Long ago, Haggemoth the dwarf mastered the arts of his ancestors, perfecting and in fact improving on many of their designs for armor, weapons, musical instruments, and artifacts. Then, still thirsty to learn and create, he began studying magic. His brethren discouraged him in this pursuit but Haggemoth’s curiosity soon turned to infatuation as his quick mind picked up the intricacies of first one school of magic and then another. When he began studying the school of necromancy, his tribe had had enough. Banished from his homeland, Haggemoth wandered the world, continuing his studies. He never had trouble making money, for he still knew the secret arts of his people and could make powerful magical weapons, which he sold to the highest bidder, following wars around the world like a wolf chasing sheep. His beard had been shorn off as part of his banishment and he determined never to regrow it, wearing his bald face as a sign of pride. Eventually, as grew his power so too did his reputation. He did great things, and terrible things, in his pursuit of power. He befriended great wizards, too, and his closest ally became the elf Udo the Grey, who sought to control the weather of the world.

After many great adventures, Haggemoth began to grow old and in his old age his heart began to yearn for the one thing his power could not grant him: a return to his home and acceptance by his people and gods. Determined to make amends, Haggemoth began a long and difficult process of cleansing his soul. It would take a lot: a lifetime of sins against his gods had brought him much of his knowledge, and a simple attonement spell would not save him. And so Haggemoth took on his greatest challenge: the challenge of erasing sin.

Removing himself from the world was his first act in the process. He needed time to think and to plan and furthermore he wanted to isolate himself from having any further impact on the world. Rori Rama was the perfect location, a vile jungle island at the edge of civilization. Using powerful magics, Haggemoth raised a reef in front of the island to serve as his “wall,” eventually people would come to live here (these would become the ancestors of the natives which took in Rayden after his doomed journey came to an end) but no one ever came to live on the island except for Haggemoth.

The island was isolated, but more importantly it was geothermically active. The whole island was an old volcano and Haggemoth built directly over its source, harnessing its power to build his fortress, his tomb, his sanctum, and his sin-erasing contraption. The inner sanctum was his only home during these long years. He only had a single visitor, and that was Udo the Grey, who came once at Haggemoth’s behest, to take from him a silver key and use it to lock Haggemoth forever inside the sanctum. Udo the Grey would be the last humanoid to ever see Haggemoth alive.

Still, Haggemoth did not live in discomfort. His sanctum was equipped with a magical kitchen so that food would never run out. His rooms were spacious and the furniture had been enchanted to be his servants, brooms and dustpans cleaning up after him, chairs rearranging themselves to his liking, and tables setting themselves for his repasts. Above all other treasures, Haggemoth valued knowledge and his library was filled with histories and philosophies, tales of ancient heroism and future musings. He captured the power of the volcano to light his lamps, an early form of electricity, and to heat his baths. A veritable zoo was kept in his lower dungeons, the creatures there all in some way essential to his work: an otyugh dispensed of his waste, and a cockatrice provided rare alchemical and magical supplements. A grey ooze, carefully contained, put off a chemical that was particularly useful for making magical weapons and armor. One creature roamed the sanctum more freely: a clever phasm named Lhouee whom he mostly kept trapped to talk to and keep him company.

There were also darker things down there. Haggemoth had long ago achieved the highest level of power that could be gained through study, and so he had then turned to more infernal means of acquiring it. A Herzuo demon lay trapped in his sanctum, bound so that it could never claim the soul that was promised it in exchange for its power. There it sat, roaring all through the days and nights until Haggemoth moved it outside of his sanctum into a hidden hall and cast a spell of silence over it, then locked it away, forever.... or so he thought.

With the demon bound and locked away, Haggemoth continued his work. Some of it was yet done for pleasure, works of carving and mosaics and painting, but most of his efforts were put to use at his grandiose forge, creating the things that he hoped would set his soul free. And there was the treasure, too. A lifetime’s worth of it, the accumulation of Haggemoth’s wealth both ill-gotten and good, that Haggemoth intended to put to a final use. Worth well over a million gold pieces, it was, enough treasure to buy a kingdom (or break one), to establish a line of heirs going far far into the future, enough to outlast even the most voracious spender. Or possibly, just enough to save a soul.

Day after day Haggemoth worked, forging first a set of massive scales, then gears, then a huge chain which he put runes on to make it susceptible to lightning. He ripped his soul from his body, setting it into a phylactery, and this became the very focus of the object he was building. Last he made a forge hammer, imbued by days of ritual casting with the power to activate his machine. And then the day came when it was done and he prepared to free his soul, once and for all.

But on this day, misfortune struck. There are beings known as the Inevitables, constructs built by the gods to have divine insight and truly neutral perspective, to be able to properly judge the world. Three of them, there are, and they represent the realities that all men must face. The Inevitability of Fate, that all must face the consequences of their actions. The Inevitability of Justice, that upholds divine contracts and the general laws of nature that govern the world. And the Inevitability of death, which all men must face. When a person attains such power that they are able to break these inevitable truths, these constructs activate and seek to right the wrong done.

In this case, Haggemoth’s demon was his undoing. For in breaching this infernal contract, Haggemoth attracted the attention of The Inevitable of Justice, who descended upon his sanctum via magical teleportation and sought to forced Haggemoth to free the demon that Haggemoth had imprisoned. A great battle was waged in the sanctum, then, as the Inevitable chased Haggemoth through his lair, each of them casting powerful magics upon the other. The battle destroyed the main halls and released the monsters from the dungeons. Haggemoth moved defensively, working his way back towards his final creation. He summoned Earth elementals to cover his escape, but the Inevitable nimbly darted around them. Haggemoth used a golem to attack the Inevitable, but the Inevitable had the upper hand, even when weakened. Finally, Haggemoth used a powerful spell to turn the hard rock around the Inevitable to mud and then back again, trapping the celestial inside a prison of stone.

The Inevitable let loose one final spell as it was trappeed and the cavern they fought in shook with the force of its command. Stalactites freed themselves from the ceiling and fell to crush Haggemoth underneath. Pinned, with his left side crushed and trapped. Exhausted and already gravely injured, Haggemoth could not survive the blow. He made one attempt to command his golem to help him before expiring. The golem made it to him but with its master dead, it simply knelt by his side and waited, still executing his last clear command: Expell the Intruder.

Meanwhile, the sanctum slowly filled with the creatures Haggemoth had kept for his work. Trapped here, they fought over what territory was available to them. The Cockatrice settled in the bedroom, turning Haggemoth gorgeous bed into their nest. The ooze ate the creatures too stupid to avoid it and then settled into a hibernative state. Rust Monsters ate much of Haggemoth’s forge and stash of metals, growing large and bold in the process. They dug tunnels that lead all through the sanctum, though none find their way up to the surface. A strange intelligent mold grew rampantly in its keeper’s absence, consuming the old monster cages and killing anything that dared return there. The Otyugh fought a grand battle for the magical kitchens and eventually set itself by the enchanted pantry, screaming every moment for food to fill its insatiable hunger. Eventually it grew to such bulk that it could no longer move. Filling one corner of the massive kitchen, it lived in its own excrement and filth and eventually the magic of the place became corrupted, spewing forth only maggot infested or rotted food. Lhouee the Phasm was worst off: more intelligent and self aware than the others, it recognized its predicament for what it was—an eternity trapped in a dungeon. For a while it amused itself by transforming into furniture to mock and mimic the enchanted furniture that still sought to tend to Haggemoth’s lair. When it grew tired of stomping around as a comfy armchair, It tore through Haggemoth’s books, seeking some spell or power that could free it. But his greatest books had been given to his device, and Lhouee could not reach that, as it was still guarded by the earth elementals and the golem. So it despaired, and slowly grew strange and gloomy in its solitude.

The demon, meanwhile, still raged against his prison, his screams falling silent against the spell that held him still. His contract was not completed. The Inevitable had failed. Haggemoth was dead, but his soul did not pass on, trapped as it was in the phylactery he had set in his grand device.

And there his soul waits, still, for a group of adventurers to find it and pass final judgement.

Critical Success

This large vaulted chamber is ringed with braziers that flicker with the glow of unearthly fire. At the north end is an imposing set of massive Stone doors, reinforced with Iron and covered with runes. A complex locking mechanism holds them closed.

The adventurers use the silver key they got from DenDen (Rayden), which originally was given to Udo the Grey. It unlocks the great double doors and they enter Haggemoth’s sanctum, the end destination of the journey they began months ago. Each comes with their own story, a story that has developed over the course of our adventures together. 

Abenthy, Aasimir born and once a great innocent, has switched alleigance from Lawful Good to Lawful Evil, believing himself to be the ultimate arbiter of justice, in service to his father, the fallen Angel I’afret. His once pure white wings have broken and rotted, becoming skeltal husks... though, ironically, the rest of the party has yet to see this, due to a comic level of irony. They have all been knocked out each time Abenthy has triggered his new true form, and thus are mostly unaware of their friend’s changed nature. It is worth noting that Abenthy is not a common lawful evil villain. His transformation began with self doubt at the beginning of this adventure. He put up his sword many a time rather than strike down a foe, for fear of straying from the narrow path he walked. But much death has occured on this adventure. He has lost allies, seen innocents harmed, and seen how villains will go unpunished. In this, he found the strength to strike without question—little thinking that perhaps the questining was his true strength and not his weakness.

Karina began this quest seeking answers. Instead, she has found only pain and more questions. Rayden’s mind is lost to her, forcing her to think on what her destiny might be, if not revenge. She has become hardened over the course of the adventure. Indeed, she is the only survivor from its start, back on the prison ship. Her original team was murdered by the Demon Pirate on the Moonsea and she carries the burden of survivor’s guilt. Whereas Abenthy has questioned less and less, more and more she finds her thoughts plagued with uncertainty. Was this worth it? Should she turn around? Will others be hurt because of her actions? Beginning as a Chaotic Neutral character, she has begun the slow but sure road towards Good. She is also becoming a legend: the legend of the Seeker of Callax, whose right eye shines brightly with the jewel given to her by the giant of Friezorazov. Each scar on her body tells a story that she knows the telling of, but not the ending of.

Tyrion’s change has been drastic. Once a well spoken dandy, he has morphed into a foul mouthed cantankerous lech, hungry for power, abandoned by his college, convinced by what he has survived with this party that he is destined for greatness beyond what others can offer him. The demon that he has taken inside of him fuels this desire and feeds in him an inner rage and disappointment that questing has not been as romantic or as heroic as the songs say it is. Determined to shape the world the way he shapes music, Tyrion has lost his originally Chaotic Good alignment and shifted into Chaotic Neutral, not caring for the world around him or the cosmic battle for good and evil as much as for how to best gain power. Ironically, this is the very path Haggemoth walked, perhaps why the demon that Tyrion inherited from Haggemoth has found him such an appropriate vessel (and letting him multi-class as a bardic warlock). The demon will continue to push for him to fall into evil, though Haggemoth’s Sanctum may contain the very thing Tyrion needs to cleanse his soul and remind him of the purity of music that first set him on his quest.

Xaviee, too, walks with them, a man who went from soldeir to shipwrecked to found. Xaviee has been through a hellish trial: everything he thought he had lost forever was given to him again, then snatched away, this time with a note of finality. Tywin is dead. Samuel and Biggs are dead. All that remains to him now is to survive, to serve, and to one day cross again the Dragonfang mountains to return to the land of his birth and reclaim in the name of those who are slain the old fortress of Vraath Keep, where his life first took a tragic turn. 

As these companions make their way through the sanctum they encounter many of the creatures Haggemoth kept here. Lhouee escapes in the guise of a armchair, goofily making his way past the bemused players who, not understanding his true nature, let him go without much fuss. He escapes to the surface world, perhaps to be seen again in another story. The cockatrice they leave well alone, but the Otyugh they engage in combat, Tyrion actually leaping inside of it and cutting it open from the inside, pushed on by the power (and insanity) of the cursed Battleaxe of the Brave. They restore the ktichen to somewhat working order, using Purify Food and Drink to restore the magic to the pantry, and take the magical lid to the pantry with them for possible use in the outside world. There is even some emotional growth for the party, as during a long rest in Haggemoth’s library in which they are interupted and nearly killed by the Grey Ooze, Karina grows closer to Abenthy, huddling next to him for warmth and comfort as Tyrion snores away and Xaviee stoically watches the entrance to the library.

But there are dangers, here, too, and the longer they spend in the sanctum, the weaker the party grows. They quickly discover that the weapons and armor they took from upstairs is fake and are thus left a little more defenseless and a little less powerful. The cursed weapons Karina and Tyrion weild are strong but Karina has a tendency to roll either critical failures or successes and each one now leaves her blinded by bloody tears. Tyrion, too, though made very strong by the Battleaxe, now rushes into combat headfirst and often goes down quickly. His health is detiorating rapidly as well due to a mysterious unidentified illness, his hit points dropping permenantly after long rests and leaving him with a bloody cough that worries them all. The rust monsters decimate their armor even further before being pushed away in an action-heavy battle which includes this wonderful scene:

“Tyrion!” Abenthy shouted. “There are more coming from your left!”

Tyrion spun at Abenthy’s words, spinning the battleaxe with his momentum, grunting as the blade cut through the legs of the Rust Monster leaping at him. The flea-like monster was mid leap as its legs were cut from under it and its final jump carried it over Tyrion’s head and into one of its fellows attacking him from the other side. They were everywhere, and he couldn’t now remember why it had felt like a good idea to rush into their midst alone. Yet he was oddly glad to be here, with the smell of blood and battle around him. Now if only they would stop chewing on his damn armor.

Behind him, Abenthy raised a fist skyward and the black gauntlet around the Assimir’s wrist began to glow red. With a roar, Abenthy spun and punched the Rust Monster closing in from behind him square in the face. The beast went flying backwards.

Karina, meanwhile, was behind the rest of them, still making her way onto the battlefield. She was just now squeezing through a gap between the two rooms, pushing past a narrow space left by a hole in the wall.

“Are you all still alive in there?” she called out. Her answer was a squeal of pain as the Rust Monster that Abenthy had punched flew into the wall in front of her, then comically slid to the ground on its back, legs pumping furiously in the air.

“Nevermind,” she shouted again, drawing her rapier and burying it deep in the monster’s exposed belly.

The biggest disaster comes in the battle with Haggemoth’s modified Earth Elementals. Two guard the chamber leading to where Haggemoth met his end and they nearly TPK the party, rolling exceptionally well and smashing through the players’ weakened defenses. With their ability to move through the stone walls and pillars of the chamber they quickly gain a tactical advantage and surround the party. In the end, it becomes a game of Karina healing Tyrion, getting knocked unconscious, and then Tyrion healing her before being knocked unconscious, with this keeping one of the elementals occupied long enough for Abenthy to reveal his true form and take out the other. Abenthy himself goes down before Tyrion and Karina can come aid him (again missing his true form because of him falling unconscious). It’s a constant game of attrition and one they only barely win. It chews up their resources and leaves all of us feeling uneasy about the Golem that still awaits them. They find out about the Golem by sending Moonglum alone into the next room, where he promptly fails a dodge roll and is crushed to death in the Golem’s massive fists.

Inevitability

I go into the Golem fight a little concerned. The Golem is a CR 10 and nothing to scoff at. It rolls a +10 to attack and hits for an average of about 25 damage a strike. It’s immune to many attacks, resistant to magic, and has an incredibly powerful ability to slow the party, drastically reducing their effectiveness. In addition, Tyrion is bound by his curse to charge it, Karina’s arrows will have little effect, and everyone is badly armored and fairly hurt (though they take a long rest after the elemental fight). I never know what will happen in Dungeons and Dragons but I know that there is a possibility for a TPK here and it would be a shame so close to the end. I have a plan in mind in case the party dies in the Sanctum to keep us in the story for a while, and I think tonite will be the night to use it.

Except I end up not needing to. Not only do I roll abysmally, but Karina comes into this fight on fire (not literally). She uses Chill Touch, which bypasses magical resistance, and ends up with a nat 20 on her first roll. As her magical skeletal hands tear at the Golem’s eyes for somewhere close to 40 damage, her curse kicks in and she started to cry tears of blood, blinding her for a couple rounds... ironcially, just as Abenthy lets loose with his skeletal wings. Yup, as fate would have it, Karina yet again missed his transformation. Tyrion sees it: but Tyrion is deep in battle rage at this point and barely takes notice. He and Abenthy move in close. The Golem opportunity attacks as they come and... totally misses, despite only needing to roll an 11 to hit either of them. It tries its Slow spell next and both of them roll 18s for their saves. Karina is stumbling around blindly but decides to take another pot shot despite her disadvantage and... rolls a nat 20. Using inspiration dice to get rid of the disadvantage the attack counts as another hit and, yup, she’s blinded some more. Abenthy and Tyrion start beating on the Golem and for a while they trade blows. But the Golem is much stronger and when Abenthy and Tyrion miss four attacks in a row, I mentally declare the battle over. The Golem fells Tyrion with a single blow and turns to finish off Abenthy.

Only Karina’s blindness has worn off by now and she rushes in behind to take advantage of sneak attack and flanking and pulls her cursed scimitar free to do battle. And Nat 20s again. With sneak attack.

The battle doesn’t last much longer than this. The Golem tries to once again rally and use its slow ability to buy it some reprieve, but the lowest save roll comes back 17 and so again this plan is thwarted. It retreats, to try and put some distance between it and the fight and Karina uses Chill Touch on it as it goes...

... and once again Nat 20s. Two skeletal hands emerge from thin air, wrap themselves around the Golem’s head, and crush it with one decisive movement, into a fine dust.

The extreme variable is one of the selling points of the D20 system for me. It doesn’t work as well for gritty realistic games, like Shadowrun or Fallout, but for a fantasy setting it gives those nice heroic moments or massive party killing disasters that the things of legends are made of. I know my players will remember this fight and Karina’s crazy rolls during it.

Speaking of legends, a while ago I gave my players a crystal orb that can show them the past and all throughout the dungeon they have been using it to keep track of the decades old battle between Haggemoth and The Inevitable. They have seen the Inevitable, a tall mechanical figure weilding a large blade and wearing a dramatic cloak, but they have not been able to recognize it for what it is. Only Abenthy has come close and then only because he grew up in a monastery, where stories of such things are common. Even so, he doesn’t realize what is trapped in the huge boulder in this room, the one that keeps shaking and moving as if it has a will of its own.

Exploration of the rest of the area reveals that Haggemoth was working on something big. The party finds giant molds for making humongous gears. They find large chains inscribed with reactive runes, causing them to explode and disintegrate upon contact with lightning. In Haggemoth’s skeletal hands they find a magical forge hammer, imbued with the power of lightning.

While Karina and Tyrion are focused on the mystery of what Haggemoth was building, Abenthy turns his attentions back to the boulder. Using his extra-ordinary senses, he perceives that a Celestial is trapped inside the rock and suddenly he puts two and two together. Not telling the rest of the group what is going on, he approaches the rock and uses his helmet of telepathy to reach inside and find the mind of the Inevtiable.

The voice that booms inside his head is beautiful and terrible at the same time. It prods at his memories, touches his fears, digs deep into his concsciousness to pull free thoughts Abenthy didn’t know were his own. And then it addresses him...

“I was sent to bring Haggemoth to justice for his crimes,” the Inevitable tells him, his voice booming inside his mind. “Release me, so that I may finish my task.”

“What has Haggemoth done that has decided his judgement?” Abenthy sent back. “I also am a follower of justice. Perhaps I would understand.”

The feeling that struck him gave Abenthy the impression of mockery, that he was being derrisively laughed at. “You? You do not understand, cannot understand. You were not built for such understanding. You think you can deliver justice? You are wrong.”

“I deliver justice,” Abenthy protested. “I have many times, in the name of my father, I’afret.”

The voice inside his head hissed like an angry cat. “You follow false gods and mete out flawed judgement. You cannot see the way I do. You think you are above the pettiness of mortals?” Images flashed suddenly inside Abenthy’s mind. He saw himself murdering pirates, sending their souls to his father. He saw himself taking patches of skin off the pirates and wearing them as badges of honor and of fear. He saw himself keeping Tywin’s blood soaked rags. He saw himself sending Targaryen to his father. He saw Verrick die as he fell from the bridge, and heard Karina’s scream of dismay again, and smiled because now he could claim her for his own.

The images slowed suddenly, and the voice returned, full of confidence and judgement. “I can see all that you have done. Even you doubt yourself. So how can you judge another? Release me, so that I may do justice.”

“No,” Abenthy responsed, his mind filled with cold clarity and a deep sense of purpose. “You are the old way. I am the new. You are obsolete. I am the new arbiter of justice. I will leave you here, old creature, and I will take your role as the new Inevitable. The world does not need your justice anymore.”

And then he cut the connection and turned, leaving without a backward glance or a word of explanation to the others, who had only seen him with a hand on the boulder, the boulder which now shook violently as if it would tear itself apart. But it did not, and Abenthy did not stop, and the world continued to turn.

On a Grand Scale

Past the golem’s cavern there is a cave lit by a red glow. The players step into it and finally I get to read the words I’ve been waiting a year to read, that first intrigued me about this adventure:

A 10’ wide stone bridge arcs into this enormous subterranean space. A mighty river of lava roils violently through the cavern 60’ below, and the roof can only dimly be seen 60’ above. Situated in the middle of this river is a significant hunk of dark, glassy stone, and upon the stone is what appears a colossal set of balance scales. The scales are a complex mass of huge gears and pulleys, but instead of rope they are threaded with sturdy metal chain, and the entire device is covered in faintly glowing runes and magical symbols. From either side of the massive apparatus, the chains support circular platforms of iron-braced marble, each 20 feet in diameter. The entire artifact is ornamented with appointments of silver, gold, and adamant, and sitting on the balances are huge piles of treasure: weapons, magical artifcts, great tomes and books, jewlery, chests of coins and gems. Too much to count, the worth must well exceed a million gold pieces.

The stone bridge extends over the lava towards the center of the scales, where a mighty anvil appears to have been built into the device. A crystal set into the top of it glows brightly, and branching out from the anvil’s sconce are bridges allowing access to the two hanging marble platforms.

This is, of course, what Haggemoth was building—a grand set of scales to balance his soul (currently resting in the phylactery in the anvil) and erase his signs. The entire device is inscribed with powerful magic, making it in essence a massive attonement spell. The treasure is the key to the spell: each side balances the other, one with magic and knowledge the other with forge items and cunning of the hands (though it also includes magical weapons). The scales need to be in balance to work—if at any point one side exceeds the other by 40lbs, the scales begin to tip. Tipped too far, the scales will rip themselves apart. 

To activate the magic of the scales, the anvil must be struck with lightning magic (like the forge hammer Abenthy claimed from Haggemoth’s corspe). If in balance when this happens... well, that’s for my players to find out.

The treasure here is truly tremendous. All of the weapons are ungodly strong, the spell books go up to level nine with rare and powerful magics, and probably the pinacle gamebreaking item is the Staff of Power tucked into the magic scale—a +2 to everything (including AC) weapon that can expend charges to do massive spell damage—which in Tyrion’s warlockian hands would wreak havoc on enemies. It’s amost too much to actually put into the game, but hey they’ve earned it. Now they just have to go get it.

Of course, there is more than just treasure here. Haggemoth’s soul hangs in the balance, too, and that in itself is a prize (albeit more of a roleplaying one) to certain members of the party...

The group knows none of this, of course. They see the scales and the treasure and are smart enough to piece together the purpose of the device, but only experimentation will tell them how it works. Karina begins using mage hand to lift items off of the scales. She gets one of the powerful spell books, a book of histories, and a jeweled harp for Tyrion (who begins to cry at the sweet heartwrenching sound it makes) before the scales tip out of balance... and also we remember that mage hand cannot lift more than a few pounds and Karina suddenly cannot cast the spell anymore today. Oops.

By now, Tyrion is walking towards the balances, a hungry look in his eyes. He halts himself just before reaching the one holding the magical items and shakes his head as if to clear it. Something inside him was yelling for him to rip, to tear, to destroy. He pulls back, suddenly disconcerted. But the hunger inside him does not go away: it shifts. He begins to think of the phylactery. If these items are the work of the soul entrapped there, then how powerful might the soul itself be?

Karina was watching him, her sweat cold despite the heat of the chamber. “Do not move any further!” she warned, gesturing towards the balances. “They have fallen out of balance. I don’t know how much more they can take. We have to balance the other side.” She looked at the balance and the thin bridge that led to it, and the 60′ fall into the lava below. Crossing would take concentration and willpower. But without her mage hand, what choice did she have?

So focused was she on the task of moving forward that she did not see Abenthy behind, standing by the anvil and staring down at the crystal phylactery, its blue light casting eerie shapes and shadows over his face. She did hear him, though, as he placed a hand on the crystal and spoke a name: I’afret. The name of his father.

A chill went through her and she turned, the plea on her lips, but Abenthy had already raised the forgehammer and, with the scales yet unbalanced, he brought it down on the anvil. 

What happens next we will discover next post.

[k-she-rambles]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic (Video Games), Songmaster - Orson Scott Card Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Characters: The Jedi Exile, Female Jedi Exile, Atton "Jaq" Rand, Mical | Disciple, Mira (Star Wars), Visas Marr, Bao-Dur (Star Wars), Kreia (Star Wars), Kreia | Darth Traya, Atris (Star Wars) Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Songmaster Fusion, Alternate Universe - Fusion, this brought to you by Atton's description of the force, magic instead of the force, Canon-Typical Violence, Atton is a Follower but that is not a bad thing, background Female Jedi Exile x Atton Rand, Mical is a good character actually, War Crimes, Genocide, Past Medical Abuse, Discussion of Infertility/Impotence, Implied Body Horror, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, I PROMISE this isn't a violent story it's just...KOTOR II and the Songhouse together, make some real shady implications, Bao-Dur is the best, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Alternate Universe - Magic, magic music, Recovery, Overuse of the Love Song, listen Songmaster has a couple of good things about it and the love song is one of them, Droids are not in focus sorry Summary:

KOTOR 2 and Songmaster fusion, where the Jedi Order is an ancient order that collects and trains children with musical powers...

It takes the Exile hours to realize what is distracting her, but also warning her of approaching droids, this foreboding that has burrowed under her skin. She can hear the Peragus mining facility singing. The creak of metal, the sizzle of lasers, the klaxon of the alarms. The oppressive silence that is more than the silence she is used to. And below that, fear.

It has been five years since she has heard anything sing.

[k-she-rambles]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Star Wars Legends: Knights of the Old Republic (Video Games), Songmaster - Orson Scott Card, Star Wars - All Media Types Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Characters: The Jedi Exile, Female Jedi Exile, Atton “Jaq” Rand, Mical | Disciple, Mira (Star Wars), Visas Marr, Bao-Dur (Star Wars), Kreia (Star Wars), Kreia | Darth Traya, Atris (Star Wars) Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Songmaster Fusion, Alternate Universe - Fusion, this brought to you by Atton’s description of the force, magic instead of the force, Canon-Typical Violence, Atton is a Follower but that is not a bad thing, background Female Jedi Exile x Atton Rand, Mical is a good character actually, War Crimes, Past Medical Abuse, Implied Body Horror, Recovery, Artistic License - Medicine, This is Not How Puberty Blockers Work, Everything is the Same But Magic Music Instead of the Force, Infertility/Impotence, Depression, Implied Past Mind Rape, I PROMISE this isn’t a violent story it’s just…KOTOR is a Lot when you think about it, And the Songhouse is…a lot like the shady parts of the Jedi Order, Ansset and Mikal vs Anakin and Palpatine GO, That’s Not How The Force Works Summary:

KOTOR 2 and Songmaster fusion, where the Jedi Order is an ancient order that collects and trains children with musical powers…

It takes the Exile hours to realize what is distracting her, but also warning her of approaching droids, this foreboding that has burrowed under her skin. She can hear the Peragus mining facility singing. The creak of metal, the sizzle of lasers, the klaxon of the alarms. The oppressive silence that is more than the silence she is used to. And below that, fear.

It has been five years since she has heard anything sing.