3,649 BBY or 4 ATC…

A man and a woman dressed in raggedy clothes began to pack their belongings as imperial guards watched from all angles. They were getting ready to leave their old lives as moisture-farmers behind and find another life on some other planet; they were not sure where, but they would. In order to get off planet, the Imperials offered transport – in exchange for information on nearby sand person settlements, so that they may be eliminated in the name of the empire. They were still in the middle of packing and were certainly made nervous by the numerous guards that stalked their homestead while they prepared to take their leave. From the south, came a sound; a grunting sound – the sound of the Ghorfa language with its intense guttural and phlegm filled growls. It grew louder and louder, so one trooper stuck his head out of the homestead that was built partially into the ground, only to have his brains splattered inside of his helmet from a cycler rifle round. The other troopers rushed over the bank of sand and lasers could be saw flying fast over the house; the man and woman could hear the terrified shrieks from the soldiers as they were torn down by Gaderffii and lasers; rifles and… lightsabers?

A sand raider appeared from over the mound of sand and raised his Gaderffii into the air above him; it was a different looking Gaffi-stick than most. He wore torn and tattered robes with rags flowing from his limbs, on his belt were two lightsabers, but most terrifying of all was his ribcage like chest piece and his eyeless mask; like he was a demon of the sands. A swarm of Ghorfa flooded over the mound and into the settlement on their master's orders and surrounded the couple – they were surprised to even be alive.

The man got to his knees and his wife followed, with their hands in the air. "Please, we don't want to die…" he was shaking in his tattered farmer tunic as the leader of this pack of beasts approached him and grabbed his shoulder, raising him to his feet. The raider did not speak in honks and grunts, instead he said:

"Leave. Now."

The man was shocked, utterly unmoving as he heard the Ghorfa speak words he never thought they could. After only a moment of thought however he figured it was best not to argue with a group of sand people. He grabbed his wife's hand and they ran to their speeder; they went ripping off into the wastes, never to be seen by the sand people again. The leading raider raised his axe headed Gaderffii into the air and made noises of triumph, so his followers joined in gladly. Liam was impressed with himself; although he could not teach the sand people to stop with their violence, he still managed to show them that mercy in the wake of such violence could be just as effective as their usual cruelty. Unfortunately, the original chieftain of the sand people tribe was killed while he was out with the salvage team around a year ago; his final request was that Liam be named the Chieftain of the tribe. Although Liam refused, the chieftain persisted to his last breath with his recommendation, so he took up the mantle. The role had grown on him, and the sand people greatly respected the four outsiders for their help with trading and getting along (Usually, this was an exception) peacefully with the other invaders on their land; unless they were imperial, of course.

Liam called out to his family, commanding all of them to return home with their banthas while he made sure that the troopers were dead and he looked for anything salvageable. The other Ghorfa complied and walked on back to their Banthas, which were at least a half-mile away. He walked down into the homestead and ripped open drawers looking for something of use. He tore apart the entire subterranean building looking for anything, but there was hardly anything.

"I see you have been busy getting to know the locals." Said a voice behind the Watchman. He spun around and held his Gaderffii firmly in both hands toward the man that stood in the shadowy lighting of the room with him; he was in Jedi robes.

"Jorek?" whispered Liam through his mask. The Zabrak looked at his old friend and bowed mockingly toward the chieftain.

"You look so… regal, for a raider." He smiled and brushed his still long hair to the side of his face, his horns made it harder to keep it in place however.

"What are you doing here!?" asked Liam as he leaned in and gave Jorek a big friendly hug; Jorek only embraced him for a moment before recoiling from the stench of his old rags.

"You smell like a year-dead Bantha!"

"When you can't show your skin, it gets hard to do the whole 'Hygiene' thing…"

Jorek just laughed and then grabbed Liam's hand, giving it a firm and sturdy shake. "Will you be showing me to your friends?" he asked to the Miraluka turned Ghorfa.

"Yes, of course, but first; how is Master Dren doing?" asked Liam with eagerness; an eagerness that soon turned to awkward discomfort as his friend refused to answer.

"He…" Jorek tried to hold back his anger, "He was killed, no one knows who did it, but his whole ship exploded while they were on their way to Quesh for peace negotiations with the empire; they found part of his body floating in the salvage…" Liam could barely stand to listen.

"That's horrible! Do… do you have any leads?" he asked with his arms held out in outrage. Jorek just shook his head to the side and shrugged.

"But, enough of that, I have something to tell you so let's get back to your home, yes?"

"So she just up and left you!? With the kid!?" Lynaree was outraged to hear the news. In the year prior, Kiber had met a beautiful Zabrak sith lord with lovely red skin and sharp horns that cut through her locks of dark hair like light through darkness. They had fallen for each other and decided that if they had a child, (Being two sith) it would be a powerful adept in the dark side. The child was born a male Zabrak with pale red skin and five horns on his head. The couple stayed together for a time, but eventually Kyshwanee, the female sith lord, admitted that she simply wanted him for his seed, so she left with the child.

"Yes!" screamed a fuming Darth Kiber, who had fallen for a trap he should have seen coming; especially after the incident with Artumez. He had built a power base even more fear inducing than his uncle's was when he was a sith lord, and before his soul had been sucked into the void with the rest of the dead sith. His Apprentice, Lord Pravus, had been nearly as successful in his endeavours as well; creating a name across the galaxy for the sith duo.

"What a Bitch!" insulted Lynaree to the sith lord who obviously was not there, "Are you gonna let her take Zajeem, just like that!?" she slammed her hand down on the Dejarik table between the two, and the holographic game pieces ran in fear of being struck with her fist.

"It is all I can do right now; I told her that he was not strong enough in the force for training, but she wouldn't listen to me!" in the empire, all force-sensitive children would be sent to Korriban for training, or suffer death. However, as a Miraluka-Human hybrid, he could sense that his son (Named Zajeem) was not strong enough in the dark side; still she persisted that he could be a great sith.

"You can't just let her do this!" said Lynaree as she stood up from her seat, "She needs to pay!"

"I know… but I can't do anything."

"Yes, you can!" she screamed at him in anger; she had never like Kyshwanee very much and would probably love to get back at her.

"I can't right now, dammit!" he stood up as well and now their faces were nearly touching. As a 'Gentleman' he remembered his manners and sat back down, "I'm sorry…"

Lynaree sighed and sat back down with slouch; this was all very depressing for them. She grabbed Kiber's hand from across the table and patted it with her other hand, "We'll find a way to get him back, eventually."

Kiber shrugged off her touch, "He will be torn apart at the academy, but we still have six more years before he is most likely going to be sent there." He held his head with his right – robotic – hand and sighed, "By then hopefully we'll have a plan."

"Master!" called Pravus from the hallway of the ship; they were currently docked at the spaceport in Balmorra. "I have the man you were looking for!" he dragged a man into the main room of the ship, kicking and screaming. He was dressed in a very patchwork suit of combat armor; a Jedi left over from the war he could bet, still trying to give Balmorra 'freedom'. Pravus grabbed the chained man's neck with his four talon-pronged hand, and threw him to his knees in front of the now standing sith lord.

"The leader of the Local resistance I presume, unless my apprentice was mistaken?"

The dark skinned human remained silent; one of his eyes was swollen shut actually. He was in rough shape.

"The militia members were taking orders from him." Answered Pravus for the prisoner.

"What is your name Jedi?" the Jedi remained silent, "how about I tell you mine, and then you introduce yourself?" the Jedi looked up at his judge, jury, and soon to be executioner; he nodded.

"You might have known me back in the Jedi temple, or heard of me from the masters; The Young Betrayer, the Example, or simply… Kiber…" to this the Jedi made a reply; his reply was his jaw reaching the ground before he spoke.

"You're… Kiber?"

The sith bowed to his Jedi captive, "The one and only… well there was two Kiberans… but that's another story!" he said, trying to add an air of humor to the seemingly grim situation. The Jedi seemed less than pleased with his sense of humor.

"What do you want from me; sith-scum!?" Kiber noticed that for a Jedi he seemed relatively easy to anger, and that could be useful. He approached his captive and grabbed his chin, forcing his eyes up to look at Kiber's tattooed face and into his harrowing yellow eyes. The man seemed only slightly shaken, but he would try his hardest to not give a sith the satisfaction of breaking him before he dies.

"I want… everything." He said cryptically.

The Jedi continued to look at his pale face, "I won't tell you anything…" he snarled through his barred teeth.

"Oh, you will after I'm done with you." And then Kiber was on him, the Jedi had fallen onto his back and Kiber was on top of him with his hand on the man's face; he screamed like a banshee in pain as an agonizing discomfort made its way through every fibre of his being and shook his resolve to the core. Kiber pushed away and got up on his feet once again, but the Jedi was still lying on the ground writhing in pain.

"Tell me your name!" Kiber commanded.

"Jaeret! My name is Jaeret!" he stumbled back up to his knees and bowed forward, resting his throbbing head on the floor in front of him. Sweat ran off of Jaeret's sweat covered head and made a dripping sound as it hit the cold metal floor of the Fury.

"Good man." Mocked the sith lord, "Now will you tell me anything about the resistance, or will I tear it from your mind."

"Chaos take you!" spouted the prisoner. The sith turned his back seemingly to think for a moment, only to spin around quickly with his hands outstretched.

"Suffer!" tendrils of blue lightning shot from his fingers and hit the Jedi. Kiber only shocked him for maybe three seconds before deciding to give him another chance; even then however he was already on the ground convulsing with saliva drooling down the side of his face. Lord Pravus grabbed him by his shoulders and lifted him to his knees once again.

"Will you speak now?" Kiber asked in a calm voice. Jaeret looked up at him painfully.

"Never!" he sneered.

Kiber shrugged and held out his hands again, "This will be a very long night…" he said as he smiled.

"So this is your tribe…" said Jorek to not anyone in particular as they approached the settlement on Liam's Bantha. The two of them departed from the Bantha's back and made their way to the gate of the village. As he pushed it open the two of them were met with the majority of the villagers, with their weapons out.

Lower your arms; he is a friend to our people! Liam declared in a very omnipotent voice to his tribe mates. The people of the village immediately set down their weapons and went back to whatever they had been doing prior. Jorek however still seemed shaken from the thought of that many sand people set upon him at once.

"Forgive my friends, they are not very trusting." Liam snickered. Jorek just scoffed jokingly and followed him to his hut. When the Chieftain opened up the curtains of the hut he unravelled his head wrappings and set his mask down on the table nearby and grabbed up his eye covering instead. Nakari was sitting on the bed in her usual robes, but in her arms she held a small baby girl, an Echani. Jorek smiled at the infant but then questions flooded into his mind.

"Who's kid is this?" he asked pointing to the baby that was coddled up in very soft fabric, sleeping.

"Oh, well that's… uh… um… we f-f-found her in the wastes after a settlement was destroyed." He continued to stare ahead with his eyeless head toward the other Jedi.

"Oh… and it's an Echani I see…" Liam bit his lip, hoping that he would not say anything, "Wait a second…" crap; Jorek turned his gaze toward Nakari and the baby – Nakari seemed unfazed – and then to Liam who was tapping his foot in the sand.

"What!?" laughed Liam with his arms in a shrugging position.

"You didn't!?" he said in a slightly hushed voice.

"Didn't what!?"

"I can't believe this!" he looked at Nakari, "I thought you were better than this!?" Jorek said to her.

"We're better because of the experience, Jorek! Try it sometime." She said as she went back to tending her child; Jorek was blushing from her suggestion.

"If the council finds out about you two making love when you're supposed to be safe guarding the galaxy… I can't state how bad it would be!"

"You don't need to, we already do." Assured Liam who was now sitting beside his lover and his daughter.

"Then why do you persist!?"

"Go read the original script of the Jedi code, maybe you'll start seeing life my way."

Jorek shook off his arrogance and collected himself, "Well, I'm here to deliver some news…"

"What is it?" asked Liam as he looked down at his baby girl.

"Two years ago, a ship arrived at Coruscant with at least a quarter of its crew dead; they were without primary systems for a few hours, and then they said they had captured a sith vessel but it had escaped." Liam continued to listen with great interest, "It took us a while with all of the crappy, damaged footage, but after cross checking the faces of the people involved we found something; your brother, Kiber." Liam was confused with what he meant about 'finding' Kiber, "He was the one who infiltrated the ship, and then killed… Xu Fane…"

"Xu Fane! She's dead!?" he stood up quickly and it woke up the baby, who began to cry; Nakari lulled it back to sleep with a song and the force.

"Yes, by your brother's hands; he is also responsible for the deaths of at least sixty soldiers, not including the ones that were killed by the lack of life support." Liam could barely believe it; his brother had survived being trapped in the temple as it burned… it did not seem possible.

"Are you sure it's him?" he questioned softly.

"No doubt…" Jorek replied.

Liam took all of it in, or tried to, with a few deep breaths and a shake of his head now and again, "No, that's not possible, he should have died!" he reached out, with the force, and searched the galaxy, searched for his brother with every ounce of power that had been bestowed upon him; nothing, it was like Kiber did not exist to the force.

"It's true Liam, I'm sorry," Jorek paused for a moment and then spoke, "We may need to eliminate him; these are desperate times." Liam wasn't sure if he could accept that. It was one thing for Kiber to have died in the fire and rubble, but to have to actually allow someone to kill his brother… he could not come to terms with that.

"We can still save him, can't we?" he asked the Zabrak hopefully.

"I'm afraid not; he is… he's already a Darth so there is little hope for him to return to the light…"

"A Darth!? Kiber is a Darth!?" he felt flustered; disturbed even, to hear such news. Kiber was never that powerful, he could not have made the position of a sith master already. Liam had defeated him and he was not even a knight yet; how formidable could he have grown in four years?

"He has an apprentice, a ship with a full crew, the whole nine parsecs!" Jorek was always honest, but just this once Liam hoped that it was some sort of sick joke. "Me and Ardernus are docked in Anchorhead if you want to come look for him; the council has already given permission for you to leave Tatooine if need be."

Liam found himself considering going with him. He looked to Nakari, the love of his life, for permission. She gave a nod and looked at him with caring eyes.

"If you need to go," she said, "Go. Lymathe, Bruudar and I will take care of things here."

"What about Ruro'r?"

"Who's Ruro'r? Asked Jorek.

"My Padawan, he's a Ghorfa."

"What!? You took a Padawan without permission from the council!?" Jorek was sure he would find a few things different with Liam, but this was a drastic change from the Liam that he once knew.

"He was force-sensitive and I didn't want the tribesmen making him into a shaman, so I made him my Padawan."

Jorek rubbed his tired eyes and sighed, "Take him along, if he wants to come…"

"R… Really?"

"Sure, if he understands basic."

Liam smiled, "Oh, don't worry," he said, "He can speak it too."