The Search for Maligdrann's Tomb
A Report by Jedi Knight Yanas Illa
Filed 196 ABY
First, I must provide a background for those unaware.
Darth Maligdrann lived during the Draggulch Period, during the Republic Dark Ages, a time of frequent wars so devastating that the Republic fell to the brink of collapse, whole swaths of the galaxy were lost to the Sith, and knowledge and information was lost as galactic infrastructure collapsed. Only the frequent infighting of the many lords of the Sith prevented them from claiming victory over the weakened Republic and beleaguered Jedi. There were many dark lords who rose and fell, and from 1734-1701 BBY, one of those lords was Darth Maligdrann.
The future Darth Maligdrann was born on the ruined world of Uphrades somewhere between 1765-1762 BBY. We have no record of her birth name, but we do know that she was raised as part of a genocidal cult which worshiped the ancient Sith Lord Darth Nihilus as a demigod and avatar of the Dark Side. Abandoning the ideology she was raised under, the Sith acolyte killed her fellow cultists and fled her homeworld. Recruiting powerful allies amongst the Sith clans to her side, she eventually became Darth Maligdrann, seizing power as the reigning Dark Lord of the Sith. While many of Maligdrann's deeds have been lost to time, one notable detail is that she traveled to a primitive planet and made it her throneworld and a place to explore the lore of the Dark Side, causing the natives to fear and worship her as a demon-god. After a decades-long reign of terror, Darth Maligdrann was killed: not by the Jedi, but by three of her own apprentices hoping to supplant her. Less is known about these apprentices, all we know is that they were in turn killed by Maligdrann's zealots, who buried her in an ancient tomb which was built by a long-lost civilization which predated the Jedi Order. As the Sith once more fell into infighting, the location of her resting place was lost to history.
My padawan K'yan Makarr and I were tasked with finding and destroying it. We first discovered Maligdrann's name during an undercover mission on Talus. An agent of Alliance Intelligence informed us that someone close to them had been called to attend a secret auction to sell Sith Artifacts on Talus. We informed the Jedi Council of this, and Tau Skywalker proposed an interesting assignment: he wished us to track the supplier. He was interested in knowing where the artifacts were coming from, to map out the supply chain at its source in order to better disrupt it.
Thus, K'yan and I attended the auction in the Kivort Mountains, dressed in the unadorned shimmersilk robes of wealthy individuals seeking to avoid attention. Assuming the identities of guests Mortia Kysal and her ward Lien – representatives of a shareholder of Tamoria Enterprises – we joined a cluster of auctioneers at a clearing near a Kuat-designed yacht with a cloaking device. The auctioneer then emerged from the yacht, a Gran woman who is most likely Toras Qella, a frequent broker for black market items. She auctioned four items to members of the crowd:
An ancient sword she claimed to be the property of Tulac Hord. This was bought by a Duros representative . I would recommend tracking this individual given his master's interest in Sith artifacts, but the sword itself was actually of Tapani make: a relic, but not of Sith origin, with no Dark Side presence.
An engraved talismann made of Aurodium. Perhaps it was genuinely manufactured by the Sith, but it was ultimately just an object of style.
The final selling piece was a ceremonial object of worship: A ceramic skull branded with a glyph: a fiery blade bisecting a star. This was described as an offering from the tomb of Darth Maligdrann.
This last one intrigued me, because this was the first time I had ever heard another living being utter Darth Maligdrann's name. I had only ever seen it on a list in the archives, one of many obscure Sith names from the fragmented period of the Draggulch era. Yet, now an artifact had been found of this Sith Lord, and the auctioneer claimed it was from her tomb.
I knew I had to claim this artifact, so the Jedi could examine it and use it to track down Maligdrann's location swiftly. If Maligdrann's throneworld had been discovered, then whatever lay within would cause serious damage in the wrong hands.
K'yan wanted to break the facade, he wanted to reveal himself, ignite his lightsaber, and intimidate Qella into revealing everything. He is still so young. I was also tempted, but I remembered Tau's instructions. We had to preserve the network for now, until we understood it completely. So, I bid, and made an investment in the network's destruction. For two million, four hundred thousand credits, I was able to secure the ceramic skull, narrowly outbidding a shareholder from Kuat. I was able to secure a holocom frequency.
This was hard for my padawan. He confessed to me that he felt wrong letting the auctioneers go, he felt that he was making deals with them, as a criminal. He is still learning to grasp the fact that we take what is given. We must work with the galaxy as it is.
We traced the holofrequency to a set of coordinates that led us into Wild Space. There, we found a ringed world orbiting a dying star. The world itself – an oceanic world with only scattered islands across its surface, was barren and lifeless. We soon detected power readings and life-signs in its southern continent: the scavengers.
As we descended into the atmosphere, I could feel the Dark Side across this world, yet it was nothing compared to what K'yan saw. As a Miraluka, K'yan is especially attuned to the auras that cling to objects in the Force, hints of the experiences they endured. All things accumulate such echoes, but objects that have spent a long time in places of power carry hints of that power. He saw death, and desolation, and it was agony for him. He struggled to stay focused, even with meditative techniques. I resolved to finish this mission swiftly.
To be continued...