Darth Nox looked down into the basket with a hard, stony eye. Her mind was quiet, distressingly quiet, but she considered the small bundle that was resting peacefully within the confines of the crib. The baby had a head of very black hair and the skin was rosey pink and healthy. The baby had nothing wrong with it at all physically, but there was one very bad thing about the child.

It was her daughter, and this was a very dangerous thing.

"For all intents and purposes, you shouldn't be alive right now." Nox watched the baby sleep and frowned when she didn't get a reaction from her words. She wouldn't, would she? She took a deep breath through her nose and averted her eyes and glanced around the nursery within her Dromund Kaas apartment complex. Outside she could hear the low rumbles of thunder from the constant lightning storm within the planet's atmosphere.

Stepping away from Darth Nox you had Vitani Aria. She had been a slave as a child, born into the poverty of a low-level nothing planet, stolen from her family in the dead of night and sent to be a worker in a mine getting power crystals for the Sith Empire's massive weapons. A very dangerous job for a young child. Somehow, by the time she made it into her teens, she had shown significant skill in the Force and was take from her mining position and sent to Korriban for her Dark Side trials.

Between her trials, a master who wanted to kill her mind and use her body as a vessel, a Dark Council member out to kill her, learning her true Sith history and lineage… and with the fact she had a number of Force Ghosts in her head ripping her apart from the inside, requiring she rebuild her mind using an unknown alien technology that nearly killed her in the process… and her deep immersion in the Dark Side of the Force…

Let's just say that for all intents and purposes, she shouldn't have been able to conceive a child. After a night of blissful passion and a quick escape she immediately felt the moment when it happened. The Force moves differently when a Force user conceives and she was the first to feel it before the medics were able to.

Vitani considered the option to abort the pregnancy. After she had defeated Darth Thanaton and taken his position on the Dark Council as the head of the Sphere of Ancient Knowledge her duties were more and more stressful, causing her to feed more and more from the Dark Side to keep her going. At one point there had been an issue with another lover of hers. It was only a trifle - just just attempted to assassinate her, but she turned the tables on him and finished him off before anyone could say "datacron". But she would be lying if the Dark Side didn't scare her at that moment because she couldn't come back. She was four months into her pregnancy at the time.

She shook her head and looked back down at the sleeping baby. Vitani had decided her name was going to be K'natara, named after Vitani's own mother. It was the only thing she remembered from the life before she was forced to give it all up for a new one. Vitani reached down and tucked the blanket closer to the baby and stroked the baby's cheek gently before she walked away and out of the room.

Outside, two of Vitani's apprentices were standing near the door - her Togrutta apprentice, Ashara, and her Kaleesh apprentice, Xalek. The two of them bowed to her as she approached.

"Ashara, I want you to watch the baby until I can locate a suitable nurse."

Ashara nodded. "Yes, my lord."

Vitani turned to her second apprentice. "Xalek, I would like you to go to Imperial Intelligence and meet with the minister. There is a datapad on my desk with the request for the personnel record of Lieutenant Malavai Quinn. I want to know everything about him."

"Yes, Master."

Vitani saw her two apprentices off to their respective errands before she retreated through her apartment to her own bedroom. She walked through the may different rooms, each space specially decorated to look like a miniature forest. In her work as a Dark Council member and the head of the Sphere of Ancient Knowledge she had numerous missions and projects taking her to a number of forested planets. She'd always loved the vitality that living plants radiated and she had cultivated small samples of specimens from Belsavis, Voss and Yavin IV and brought them home. With specific temperature settings and a little bit of luck, the small plants all of took over her apartment complex.

Before the tired woman hit her pillows she had already made up her mind as to what she was going to do.