It was below freezing in Sundari, so the display of nineteen bodies upon the walls of the city's palace was not so offensive as it might have been. The Clan Kryze bore the inelegant deformities of old-fashioned violence, but they did not smell, nor did they attract flies. The snow prettied the blood into a sprawl of red gems. And the sight of them was accompanied, perhaps most pleasingly, by near silence.
The hushed quiet of the city in the snowy days following the coup was magnetic. Sundari had, in the past months, been enveloped in a violent storm of sound – public rallies, and the bombs of the terrorists, and the screaming of sirens. In this powerful silence, on this historic day, the city was transformed into some spectacular open-air museum. The people of Sundari were drawn along a slow pilgrimage to view the severed heads of their Duke and Duchess. They noted the jal'galaar hawk that had been painted upon the walls in stark geometric lines. It was an ancient and familiar symbol, and it seemed natural that on this day, it should be there. This was today's dynasty, which would be later torn down for another.
To open the exhibition, there was a mandatory viewing of the museum's centrepiece. The system's new Mand'alor, the General Iadon, stood tall in his bloodstained beskar'gam against the backdrop of the slaughtered family upon the walls. To his left, huddled under layers of wool and standing perfectly still was fifteen-year-old Bo-Katan Kryze, an asset greater than any spoil of war – yesterday the second heir to the throne Kryze, and today a willing champion of the Old Guard revolution. They paraded her gladly but would not test her oration on this first day.
"Mando'ade, the New Mandalorians have failed you," Iadon proclaimed. "They have abolished capital punishment and allowed crime to fester on Mandalore. They have sold our beskar to our enemies. They have tainted the character of our ancient civilisation with the intake of illegal immigrants from warring systems. And they have shown, with their abysmal failure in battle-"
Iadon gestured, then, with an armoured limb, towards the bodies above him.
"-that they are no longer the same family that fought valiantly for the leadership of our system so many years ago. The Mando'ade have been the fiercest of warriors for millennia and we will not be repressed. The age of the New Mandalorians, of the Faithless, is over."
The man declared many other things that the people had heard already from the terrorists. And he said many things that the people knew were incorrect; he claimed that they would begin a new era – when of course, the Old Guard had already had their era, years ago, and they probably would again, under a new name, in the years to come.
And in the days that followed, new exhibitions appeared all over Sundari, and spread across the planetary system in the coming weeks. Mandalorians noted, with stony stoicism, the increasing numbers of empty houses, as those who offended the values of the new leadership disappeared. On occasion, a body was displayed, to convey some point to a particularly resistant pocket of society. Mostly, however, the museum's curators were subtle and efficient in their work.
It was also publicised, though without great fanfare, as though it were an embarrassment, that one member of the royal family remained unaccounted for. There was a 6,000,000 krona reward for the capture of Satine Kryze, traitor to Mandalore and public enemy.
And so begins my COVID labour of love - my version of that infamous mission to Mandalore. It is all finished with the need for a little editing as we go so chapters should come pretty regularly, a few each week. It would mean the world to me if I had some reviewers come on this journey with me.
Not much action in the prologue, but next chapter we will meet our two young heroes.
-S