A Wild, Untamed Thing
Main Theme- Bela Lugosi's Dead by Bauhaus
Zuke crashes through the castle's front door with the rebel trapped in his durasteel-grip. He and the rebel miraculously miss the acid rain, but Aero's ship isn't so lucky. The toxic-green acid eats away at the roof, and Kreel can hear Aero muttering prayers to the Maker for the rain to go away. Misty pulls his hood further down, hoping for an extra measure of protection. Shrap busies himself by cleaning the nozzle of his flamethrower, while Cav just looks out of the window to watch the rain. Mic decides to be talkative.
"Vjun was once known for its hand-woven tunics that would sell for a fortune."
"I'm going to guess the acid rain ruined the economy." Shrap remarks.
"Actually, all the Vjunites died, taking their economy with them."
"How? Was there a Great Acid Flood?" Shrap snorts derisively.
"They went mad and killed each other." Mic concludes grimly.
"Yeah, I can believe it of this place." Cav comments. The ship is parked under an alcove, narrowly protecting it from the acid onslaught. They sprint out of the ship and into the hole that used to be a front door.
"I pray there is no wind." Aero mutters under his breath. They find the decrepit remains of the door but no sign of Zuke or the rebel. Then, bright lights come on and mess up their helmets' display.
"Please, don't fire upon us, Sergeant Kreel. We bid you no harm." Rama's voice causes Kreel's stomach to twist. Rama walks out of the light dressed all in black. He wears long, black gloves with sharp claws studding the fingertips. He wears a loose, sleeveless body suit that contorts to his lithe frame, while black toe shoes adorn his pale feet. His white hair falls around his waist like a natural cape for the bastard royal.
"Where's Zuke?" Kreel gestures for his men to lower their weapons, much to the relief of the Duros struggling to turn off the lights and move it out of the room.
"Taking the dead rebel body to the morgue. Yes, Cav, there is a morgue in this potentially haunted castle." Rama answers, and Cav lowers his hand.
"What do you mean by potentially?" Shrap looks around suspiciously for any sign of the supernatural.
"Vjun is a conduit for the Dark Side, particularly this castle." Rama claps his gloved hands and smiles. "Or so the legends say."
"Are you doing a documentary on this place?" Cav asks.
"That wouldn't be a bad idea for a holofilm, but, alas, I prefer to act." He starts to walk and gestures for them to follow. Kreel is the first to follow, and his men follow him in turn, even if Shrap keeps looking around the moldering hallway for any hint of a ghost. Unlike the high-alloy metals that protect the castle from acid raid, the interior is composed of dark stones. The flagstones are made from the local sea pebbles, so, if by any chance that the metal shell gave way, then the floors would be fine. The acid rain splashes against the soot-colored windows, but the glass holds firm as it had for centuries.
"Step lively, some of these stones are quite loose."
"Are the traps still active in this place?" Mic inquires.
"Dooku disabled all of them when he took this castle as his base, though he spent more time at the chateau than here…"
"Dooku? As in Count Dooku?" Kreel remembers the infamous Count of Serenno from the rudimentary history class of basic training; he led the Confederacy of Independent Systems against the Old Republic and lost his life to General Anakin Skywalker.
"Who else would have that name now? The last of House Dooku was extinguished four years ago." Kreel can't see Rama's face, but the third eye peeks under the curtain of white hair. There's a darkness to it like loss, regret, and smoldering rage.
They arrive at the morgue that still has traces of embalming fluid in its musty air. Zuke waits awkwardly by the rebel's corpse on the metal slab; her mighty neck is twisted like she fell off a building and landed wrong. Or, rather, all of Zuke landed on her. The other man, or H'drachi, is stroking his long white beard and has a faraway look on his face. He wears blue-tinted glasses on top of his long snout along with robes the color of sand.
"Director Ch'been, I'd like to introduce you to my friends."
"Ch'been? I know I heard of that name from somewhere." Mic comments. Ch'been makes no effort to speak, but then nods right as Mic finds the answer.
"Oh, you were supposed to direct that Baby Ludi film, but then it went into production hells!"
"It will never leave its hells." He says with a papery voice.
"You seem awfully calm about the dead body." Cav points out bluntly.
"She was always going to die like that."
"You a fatalist or something?" Shrap quips.
"The time-stream is rarely altered." The H'drachi intones primeval doom like a prophet of old.
"Fortuneteller too."
"We'll collect the body and leave now." Kreel hopes that this will put an end to this, but Rama smiles at him.
"The acid rain won't cease for another hour, more than enough to finish the scene." The H'drachi regards him through his lapis lenses. He has foreseen this too.
"Sarge, the van won't survive another hour in these conditions." Aero reports.
"And it's not like the rebel's going anywhere." Zuke adds.
Kreel resigns himself to the future.
The monochrome guards lay in a heap behind the white-haired creature feasting upon the most slender of their number. Drops of crimson roll down the fine neck from its two puncture wounds. The masked captain enters, dressed in the red robes of the disposed lord, and the creature lets the guard drop to the floor with a human thud. The creature leaps over the corpse and then lands en pointe; he holds out his monstrous hand out to the captain. The captain genuflects and then takes the hand to plant a gentle kiss on his monstrous liege. The creature removes the captain's gray mask and tosses it back onto the heap.
"Kreel! Kreel!" Armitage shouts excitedly at the holoscreen.
"So it is." Vader replies and gives him another cookie.
Author's Comments- Here are links:
Here is an image of Bast Castle: a href=" . /swfanon/images/8/8c/BAST_ /revision/latest?cb=20100617001641"Link/a
Here is an image of an H'drachi; they existed in Legends/EU and were cameloids as in they looked like camels with some human characteristics; the species was highly Force-sensitive, but were never poached by the Jedi or the Sith. Rather, most of their modern history is marked by human dominance from the Old Republic through the Empire. They endured imperial oppression because they could see the future (called timestream or time-stream depending where you look in the Wookie) and foresaw that the Empire would lose: a href=" . /starwars/images/b/b3/Ch% /revision/latest/top-crop/width/360/height/450?cb=20060623063930"Link/a
In Legends/EU, Bast Castle was once used by Count Dooku during the Clone Wars and then became Vader's home when he wasn't doing the Emperor's bidding; he'd studied the Dark Side there in hopes of finding a way to repair his broken body. Vjun is steeped in the Dark Side, and lots of horrible Force experiments happened there. One of them was in Bitter End, Vjun's capital, the people went mad and killed each other. Also, Whie Malreaux, one of the younglings that Anakin murders in RoTS, is from there and gets expanded upon in Sean Stewart's Yoda: Dark Rendezvous. It's also the best book with Yoda and Dooku in it, so I recommend reading it.
Ch'been is just a name with a few scant details to his Wookie page. It's true that he's an H'drachi spiritualist and a holofilm director that was supposed to direct the untitled Baby Ludi film, but his character is entirely made up for this story. I'm still working on said character, but that's more for down the road with this series. Next part should be about Rama's life day which happens to be on the first day of New Year Fete Week.