Episode 4: Welcome To The Jungle
Chapter 4: An Infernal Truth
In the preceding chapter, we observed a diplomatic banquet with Separatist guests, which was suddenly and dramatically interrupted by a freak firestorm coming out of nowhere and laying waste to Hell's Gate (the Republic's biggest spaceport on the moon of Pandora.)
Anakin and company feared the worst, speculating that the scientists at Hell's Gate had been messing around with unknown forces that mortal sentient beings were never meant to comprehend, and that the black obelisk in the central district of the base was the root cause of the problem. Whether or not this paranormal event was related to the supposedly extinct evil practice of channeling the "Dark Side of the Force" was still a question up for debate.
But what General Skywalker and his colleagues would discover in the scorched, dusty, slimy ruins of the base would prove to be more horrifying and insidious than anything they could possibly imagine.
Cue music: Godzilla NES Creepypasta- Red Chase Theme
"Oozing tentacles and rotten fungi everywhere? If only I hadn't seen that a dozen times! Seems like another case of the Upside Down..."
Anakin had seen the characteristic look of eldritch horror taint before, so he knew what to be on guard for. Beidou and Ahsoka kept their lightsabers ignited, while the Master Chief dual wielded submachine guns, ready to open fire on any monster that came around the corner. Still, even though the Mind Flayer and its army of Demogorgons was a well known and frequently researched threat to the Republic, practically nobody was aware of the true extent of the Upside Down's corruption.
Master Skywalker, like everyone else, had initially assumed the Mind Flayer was the main kingpin in control of the tainting process, and believed that the Upside Down wasn't very high on the list of enemies of liberty to be prioritized. How wrong he was...
As the four heroes progressed deeper into ground zero, they came across dead bodies of clone troopers and scientists which had disgusting fungal fruiting bodies growing out of them.
Anakin, Beidou and Ahsoka all choked and gagged on the putrid clouds of spores which were becoming thicker by the second, and if it hadn't been for Chief handing them gas masks, they would've succumbed to the same horrific infection that had claimed the lives and souls of the personnel at Hell's Gate. Within half an hour, the team had reached the black obelisk.
Oddly enough, though, there were no Demogorgons or any other kind of aberration in sight. The remnants of the base were apparently, completely silent and empty- until the Jedi's Force senses kicked in, warning them of danger just SECONDS before it struck.
A high ranking clone trooper who the party recognized as Commander Semicolon rabidly attacked Beidou with a silenced chainsword in his hands, but got a roundhouse kick to the chest in return, breaking his ribs, puncturing a lung and paralyzing him.
His helmet came flying off from the force of the blow, too, and Anakin and friends were shocked to see that the trooper had turned into an Ork, with the trademark luscious green skin, red eyes and pointed ears of the infamous barbaric beast race.
Ahsoka started to question her sanity when she saw this.
"The most genetically stable humans ever known, the spawn of Jango Fett, mutating all of a sudden and turning into Orks? What kind of madness is the multiverse coming to?"
Then the heroes heard the voice.
"You speak as if madness is a bad thing. No, no, can't you see? It's all a monstrous, demented gag... your morals, virtues and life itself are all meaningless."
"WHO SAID THAT?," Master Chief shouted, expecting the Flood (maybe the Gravemind?) to show up.
After a few seconds passed, he realized the sentence came from the black obelisk, exactly what Anakin had warned everybody about. Beidou and Ahsoka felt fear... but not the typical kind. No, this was fear of the unknown, the strongest fear of all.
"Why do you keep fighting? Your cause is doomed to fail, and all will fade away given enough time. History shows that every unity eventually breaks or changes. There is no one ideal that suits every single person. Soon, you'll see the truth..."
Then Anakin dared himself to ask a question to the eldritch abomination that had somehow wound up inside of the pillar of darkness... and immediately regretted the answer.
"Who are you, really?"
"Since you have the audacity to ask that, I'll give you my whole story."
"I am the thing that haunts your nightmares and pulls the strings of entire nations from the shadows. I am the one who will awaken the Nameless Evil and bring petrifying fear into the hearts of even the most stoic and valiant. I am the first host of a rapidly spreading pathogen that is corrupting your entire pitiful, pathetic Republic, and destroying it from within. The multiverse will know no rest for a billion years once my goals have been achieved. Tell your allies and leaders everything you have heard... SEE IF THEY BELIEVE YOU! Your fate is set in stone, and there is no stopping the inevitable. The Dark Side will RISE AGAIN."
And with those last few words, the ruins fell silent once more, and the four witnesses were left speechless. The obelisk had straight-up vanished, too.
Following the close encounter with an unknown cosmic horror, Master Chief proposed a next course of action.
"Should we try to find a way off-world and tell the Senate about everything we heard? I recorded it all in my helmet's comlink system. Who do you think that was, speaking from inside the pitch black spire?"
"I don't know who from the Upside Down spoke to us and caused Hell's Gate to become literal," Beidou said. "But we should mention this instance to our leadership as soon as possible."
"Isn't that what our new enemy wants?," Anakin replied, doubting if passing on the information was the right thing to do.
Later...
It took hours of searching through the desolate rubble that was once Pandora's only spaceport, but Anakin and his crew eventually did find an untouched Theta-class shuttlecraft to ferry them to Alpha Centauri, the United Galactic Republic's secondary capital next to Coruscant in the Sol System. The Senate just HAD to listen, because treason was one of the most heinous crimes a politician could commit, and nobody wanted to be caught and prosecuted.
Note: In this story, Pandora is located in a totally different star system than Alpha Centauri, its parent gas giant, Polyphemus, orbits a white main sequence star instead of ACA and ACB, 50 light-years from Terra/Coruscant.
However, when Chancellor Sheev Palpatine, Vice President Malcador, Prime Minister Jacob Keyes and a bunch of Senators received information of a twisted conspiracy rooted in the Republic's highest seats of government, from Anakin Skywalker of all people, they burst into nervous laughter and dismissed the conversation, as if they were trying to hide something.
Anakin and company flat-out ignored this detail, which wasn't wise, and when Neytiri and Jake Sully, both Republic Army veterans, accused the politicians and bankers of covering something up, they were escorted out of the room by armed guards.
General Grievous and his accompanying former Confederates brought up the idea once again during a meeting with the Jedi Council, to which Yoda grimly concluded:
"Only begun, the war has. Trust no one, we must."
And to everyone's shock, Grievous agreed with the Jedi.
EPISODE 4 END
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I'm pretty sure you all know who was controlling the pitch-black obelisk/pillar/spire of Odium. He'll be out on a major battlefield for everyone to see in Episode 6, the FINALE, using the power he obtained from the Obelisk of Odium.
Next time on SH50K: Episode 5: The Avatar's Wrath
Additional Lore Chapters: Skyborn Drop Troops expansion, Biomes of the Milky Way Galaxy
