"The Separatist Movement was a militarized political movement that originated on Ord Mantell and inspired scores of systems to declare independence from the Old Republic. These systems formed the Separatist League and, despite overwhelming odds, successfully staved off the Republic forces and won their collective independence. Eight years later, they decided in a public vote to join the Sith Empire. When the Empire collapsed, so too did these systems. Many of them never recovered."
-a footnote from The Wars of the Sith Empire
by Jedi Master Abro'him Sai'ra
The Separatist Chapter 2: The Obsidian Tower
Sodomah's mountains sloped mistily into the sweeping desert basin in the frosty hues of fog and rain. The basin spread in a rolling expanse of sand and scattered brush, and barren stone canals lacerated the land like catscratch on a worn rug. Republic troopers clad in white plastoid armor and armed with heavy blaster rifles patrolled in and around the canals. Several NR-2 light transports sat grounded atop flat granite outcroppings, and a small Fortitude-class assault shuttle passed over the peaks and descended to join them.
Unseen, laying prone under the shrubs on a mountainside escarpment, a squad of Separatists watched the troopers carefully. The Separatists included four humans, a native Sodomean, and an Alazmec. One of the humans, a sniper named Tupper Terrazzo, studied the troopers through the scope of his rifle, a modified Tusken Cycler. He adjusted its scope with the slightest hair turn of a knob. And the Sodomean, Ru Noor, observed the canals through thermal binoculars and muttered something in his pillowy, wispy language. He was tall and lanky for a Sodomean, a species that largely resembled rabbits with a pair of antlers.
"I guess our ambush turned into a recon op," Akrassh Cauldrino, the Alazmec, mused.
"You think?" Ru said, still peering through his binoculars.
"We could take them," Gord Kafflin suggested, and he almost sounded serious. "We only need to take out twenty of them each and then kindly ask the rest to surrender."
"Someone's going to need to take my twenty, because I'm sitting that one out," Tupper said.
"And someone will have to pick up on Ru's slack. He sucks at shooting," Oskain Honsun added and grinned. He looked at Ru, who made a crass gesture with his hand.
"But the Republic has never cared about the dry canals," Master Sergeant Lambert Oomer murmured.
Akrassh the Alazmec, Ru the Sodomean, and the humans Gord, Oskain and Tupper all hushed, and the only noise was the wind blowing the sands and imperceptibly weathering the stones.
"Let's head back and report to Paxana. He'll want to know about this," Oomer continued.
"And maybe have a word with the guys at intel," Oskain said.
"They were only off by about a hundred troopers. We've had worse intel," Gord noted. He adjusted his grip on his FE-89 rifle.
"That's so true it's sad," said Tupper.
"Still, I'd rather be here than working in the vapor mines or at the ozone dams," Akrassh said.
"I'd rather be playing Trandoshan-rules lakross," Oskain said and spat at the ground.
Ru interrupted the conversation with a quick, subtle motion of his hand.
"Sarge, we have a problem," he said. He was observing the troopers through his binoculars as he spoke.
"What is it?" Oomer said, moving next to Ru.
Ru handed him the binoculars and pointed.
"See that fourth shuttle that just landed, the Fortitude-class? A Jedi walked off the boarding ramp, and I think he senses us."
"How can you tell?" Oskain said, and there was a hint of anxiety in his voice.
"He looked right at me," Ru said.
"Ru's right. The Jedi is looking straight at us," Oomer said as he gazed through the binoculars. "Now he's reboarding the shuttle." Oomer handed the binoculars back to Ru. "Let's get back to the bikes, double time," he ordered calmly.
The six men of Wompa Platoon made their way out of the line of sight and raced for their LL-11 speeder bikes hovering in a neat row. They mounted the bikes and twisted the accelerators and, with an electric whoop from the bikes, sped down the opposite side of the mountain. The speeders were fast but not as fast as shuttles built for intergalactic flight, and the Jedi's assault shuttle quickly overtook them and began firing, jettisoning sand upward and charring it. Unlike the basin's flat sprawl, this area was dense hill country, and Wompa Platoon maneuvered in snake patterns and dispersed into the rugged moonscape.
Perhaps it was the Jedi's instincts or sheer chance, but his assault shuttle pursued Master Sergeant Oomer first. The shuttle gunned him down, and his speeder bike exploded and flipped wildly, crashing into a cliff wall. Then the three NR-2 light transports appeared in the sky with engines throbbing loudly like a swarm of a million flying insects, and they hounded after the Separatists with a relentless rapacity.
Tupper had not been deployed on Sodomah long, but he had learned the terrain quickly. The rest of Wompa Platoon raced for the Separatist stronghold of Firesweep City. But the city was too far away, and Tupper knew none of them would make it. He then remembered the Obsidian Tower. Yes, that's exactly where he'd go. It was close, and he'd just make it.
Back in Firesweep City, he had heard stories of the Obsidian Tower. The native Sodomeans, the Alazmecs from Mustafar, and the humans from Hetzal Prime had lived on Sodomah the longest and were the most numerous of its inhabitants, and so naturally they had the most to tell. They all claimed a Sith Lord named Darth Orphia dwelled inside the Tower, and that she had mysteriously transformed into a statue of black salt. The Slumbering Sith, they called her. The humans said a true love's kiss would free her. The Alazmecs believed sacrificial blood would lift the enchantment. The Sodomeans were adamant that only a powerful Sith Lord could revert her to living flesh and blood. The one thing everyone agreed on, whether native or immigrant, was that she was beautiful and very, very old.
The Tower was real, at least. Tupper had seen it distantly many times before, though he had never found a reason for visiting the Sith statue until now. If he could awaken her, she could save him and his platoon. He veered his bike towards the Tower's coordinates and floored the bike across the staggered, meandering, and steep spaces between the hills.
And then he saw the Obsidian Tower, a shiny black splinter atop a far away mountain that was eroded with the ominous imprint of a skull. As Tupper sped through the hills, the Tower came into larger and clearer focus. It was a jagged needle of glossy black rock, crudely shaped like a shard from a shattered mirror. There were no windows or markings, and the entrance was doorless and dark like the dismal mouth of a mynock-infested cave. Tupper wondered if the Tower had formed naturally over eons of it the ancient Sodomeans had carved it. No one, not even the Sodomeans, remembered.
Tupper's bike whooped and echoed through the desiccated hills. The Tower was nestled starkly on the mountain's summit like an ebony sword sheathed into a great stone. He soon reached the foot of the mountain and began ascending its ghoulish facade. He sped upward to the summit and swept into the Tower's dark entrance like a gust of wind.
The inside of the Tower was very dark and utterly silent. The walls could barely be made out, but the inner sanctuary appeared to be circular. A single pillar of ghostly light pierced down the center of the sanctuary from a hole in the high ceiling. In the center of the beam of light, on the cold floor, stood a statue of a woman.
Tupper dismounted from his speeder bike and approached the statue cautiously. He stepped into the pallid light and examined the statue of black salt. The woman wore exotic robes, like those of the Sith and the Jedi. Hanging from her belt was a thin cylindrical shaft ornamented with grooves and notches, the unmistakable form of a lightsaber hilt. The woman's face appeared stern and solemn, and she was indeed beautiful. The rumors had been true in that regard. But Tupper did not know how to awaken her, if such a thing could be done, and if the statue had once been alive.
He squatted and puzzled the problem over. Even if the Sodomeans and Alazmecs were right, he did not know any blood letting rituals or Sith dark arts. He considered the Hetzalian theory of kissing the statue but decided against it. Such an act felt like a violation of the frozen Sith, and ineffective. He decided to search the Tower for a clue to the Sith's curse.
Tupper scoured the sanctuary for runes, carvings, glyphs, paintings, or anything beyond the bare obsidian walls. Finding nothing, he returned to the statue. He then saw that the flooring at the statue's feet was scratched. He knelt and ran his fingers over the scrape marks on the stone floor. He promptly stood up, gripped the statue, and pushed. The statue moved, and after much effort, Tupper revealed under it a secret staircase leading down beneath the Tower.
The staircase was very steep, and there was little visibility from the Tower's single ray of light and no visibility at all further down. Tupper descended it carefully, sliding a foot to the edge of each step to feel where the next step began. He kept both hands on the walls to steady himself. The air smelled musky and old, and it felt warm.
At the bottom of the hidden staircase, Tupper discovered a cave curtained and buttressed and chandeliered with glowing red crystals. These must have been the corrupted Kyber crystals of the Sith that he'd heard tale of, he decided. At the far end of the crystal cave was a large sarcophagus. It appeared to be nothing more than a bulky and archaic stone chest, and etched onto the lid's rim were Sith runes. Tupper slid the lid off the sarcophagus, and the lid clanked on the ground. Inside it was a little girl, and she looked either very recently dead or sleeping.
Darth Orphia existed after all, it seemed. The little girl was human, with curly black hair and an innocent countenance. She wore black robes and held in her hands like a bouquet of flowers the chromium hilt of a lightsaber. The girl couldn't have been older than nine years old, but if the stories were true, she was much older than she appeared.
Tupper placed his hand under the girl's nose to feel for air. Miraculously, he felt her breathing soundly. She was alive. So how did someone wake up a child magicked into eternal sleep? He thought about just shaking her awake, but then imagined a startled Sith activating her lightsaber and hacking him to bits. She was likely a psychopathic murderess like most Sith, but she was still a child. Tupper decided to wake her up the way his father had back on his homeworld Teardrop many, many years ago. He cleared his throat and sang in a soft voice he still remembered from his earliest childhood:
Good morning, oh, how are you?
It's time to rise and shine.
The day is very new,
And there's lots and lots to do,
And we haven't got much time.
The girl groaned and rolled onto her stomach.
"I don't want to get up," she grumbled.
Tupper gaped in incredulous wonder at the girl who was now awake. His father's annoying song had broken an ancient curse.
"Are you Darth Orphia?" he asked.
The girl sat up and rubbed her eyes and yawned.
"No, just Orphia," she said. She looked at Tupper with big, bright eyes. "Who are you?"
"Tupper Terrazzo. I'm with the Separatists."
"What's a sepritist?"
"A soldier who fights for freedom. Do you remember how you came here?"
Orphia smoothed down her legs and held her lightsaber to her chest snuggly like a stuffed animal.
"No. The last thing I remember is yesterday practicing my blocks with the remote training probe. And I did lots of exercises and read a chapter of my Sith history book. That was on my master's ship. It's a very nice ship, and it goes very fast. She calls it the Headwind, but I don't like that name very much. I like Pearl, but I told her I like Princess and Magician too."
"I do not know how long you've been in this chamber, or how you have not aged, but I promise you, none of that was yesterday," Tupper said.
"I don't get it," Orphia said.
He extended a hand to her. "Come on. Let's get you out of here, and I'll explain everything later."
He helped her out of the sarcophagus, which no longer felt like a sarcophagus but more like a really ugly bed, and led her up the stairs. They used her lightsaber to illuminate their way, and they made it to the upper sanctuary with ease.
"That's a funny statue," Orphia said, smoldering curiously at the black salt statue of the Sith woman.
"Yeah, it is," Tupper indulged her, and he pushed the statue back over the staircase. He then led her to his speeder bike. He mounted it. "Stay here," he said. "Some people were after me, and I need to make sure it's safe outside."
"But I want to come. I can help."
"Sorry, but no. Stay here. I'll be dropping you off at the nearest Sith temple after this."
And Tupper zoomed away with a mechanical shriek. Unbelievable, he thought. He had been searching for a powerful Sith Lord of legend and instead found a youngling. His thoughts were abruptly interrupted. Outside the Obsidian Tower was a grounded Republic transport shuttle, the Fortitude-class assault one. A Jedi and several troopers stood in front of it, blocking his way. The Jedi approached, and he held his lightsaber in his hand, and his robes flapped and swayed gently in the dry wind. He was a Quarren, and his voice churned and rumbled deeply like the deep sea currents and volcanic vents of his homeworld.
"I knew you fled here. I felt it," the Jedi said. "You're the last one. The Force has led me to you."
"Then you must also know why I came, and what lurks behind me," Tupper bluffed, gesturing with a thumb behind him toward the Tower's shadowy entrance.
"A legend, marksman. Only a legend."
"No," Tupper said and smirked with all the false bravado he could muster. "She's real. And if you don't scurry out of here, she'll slaughter you all."
"Enough," the Jedi said. He activated his lightsaber, and it snap-hissed and generated a humming green blade.
Now Tupper favored the Tusken Cycler to other sniper rifles for its feather weight and uncanny durability. They allowed the Tusken Raiders of Tatooine to swiftly traverse across dunes, canyons, and mountains, and they never broke and could even be used as hardy war clubs. However, they also had a low fire rate and unwieldy recoil. For these latter reasons, Tupper also carried on his person a pair of OL-45 pistols, and he used them for moments just like this. As soon as he saw the flash of the green energy blade, he drew both pistols and aimed to fire, when suddenly a chilling voice oozed from the Obsidian Tower. The voice sounded like the creaking of dead branches in winter and the whirring of bitter winds before a storm.
"I...am...real... I have killed...a bajillion Jedi... And...I...eat...their...blood!"
A snap-hiss echoed from inside the Tower, and in the darkness a solitary red blade of light formed.
Tupper did not hesitate and used the distraction to set his pistols to stun and shoot the Jedi. The Jedi crumpled to the ground. The troopers prepared to fire, but Tupper stunned them almost instantly, before they could even redirect their rifles. He would have preferred to kill them, but the child was watching, even if she was a Sith.
Orphia jogged to Tupper.
"Did you like my trick?" she said.
"How did you talk like that?" Tupper asked as he holstered his OL-45s.
"It's my creepy voice. My master taught me how to do it."
"I didn't know Sith could manipulate their voices."
"It's easy. My master called it voice masking, and mine is way scarier than hers," she said, smiling proudly.
"I believe it. So have you really eaten Jedi blood?" Tupper said.
"No, of course not, silly!" Orphia said, giggling at the question's apparent obviousness.
Tupper nodded and glanced at the transport shuttle.
"Let's get out of here. We'll use that ship and fly to Firesweep City. It'll be safer there."
"I'm hungry," Orphia said.
"They have plenty of food there. We can eat some lisca chips with hollossa pepper salsa. It's not too spicy, and then we can see the Lotlot camel birds."
"Okay!" Ophia said, beaming, and her grin made Tupper smile too.
"And then we're taking you to a Sith temple. The Gamorr system is only half a parsec away. Maybe there's one there. If not, there's definitely one on Shola."
They boarded the shuttle, but not before Tupper scooped up the Jedi's lightsaber and clipped it to his own belt. He had no way of securing the Jedi as a prisoner, but he could at least keep a little souvenir. And in moments they lifted off and soared high over the mountains. The Obsidian Tower shrank behind them, and the mountains and flats and brush swept beneath them in a rolling gamut of creams and golds and greens and rusts.
"Can I name this ship?" Ophia asked. She kicked her feet dangling from the copilot chair that was too big for her.
"It's not the kind of ship that merits a name. It's not even a ship, really. It's a shuttle," Tupper said as he worked the pilot console.
"I still want to name it."
"Okay, then name it."
"The Freedom Fighter!"
Tupper was pensive.
"I think it sounds nice," Orphia added.
"To be honest, that is not a name I was expecting."
"Well you said you fight for freedom, so I thought of Freedom Fighter."
Tupper chuckled, and he felt a strange paternal warmness come over him.
"Okay. The Freedom Fighter it is," he said.
And they sailed among the sweeping, painted clouds of the Sodomean sunset, and they ate lisca chips in Firesweep City and watched the camel birds and listened to an Alazmec band play traditional Mustafarian music in the city plaza. And to this day, the locals of Sodomah still speak of the Slumbering Sith, and they all agree that her statue will awaken if a Jedi comes near her Tower. No Jedi has approached that place since.
