Long ago, before the Old Republic, further back in time than historians can record, before life itself, there existed the Mortis Gods. These were beings for whom the force was not an invisible mystery, but a life-giving fluid, malleable, and as pure as the clearest glacier spring. These Mortis Gods could influence this energy, and with the songs that they sang, could birth life and creation itself. In this raw chaos at the birth of the universe, everything was in perfect balance.
Until the Son, the most passionate of the three Mortis beings, began to sing in dissonance with the others, hoping to prove himself, and to rule over all things. His songs interweaved darkness with the light. The Daughter would sing the stars into being, to be beacons of hope for life itself, but the Son, fearing the potential of mortals, sang his own songs so that the stars would kill with cancer, and so that they would inevitably, and explosively, die.
In response, the Daughter then chose to make the cosmos an oasis, so that when sentient life expanded, they would find a home wherever they went. Trees grew on every world, and life thrived. Fearing mortals, the Son sang another song of corruption, so that the cosmos became a lifeless void, only able to support life in the most insignificant respect.
Whatever the Daughter chose to create, the Son would corrupt, and with each strike against the other, as their magic spread over the galaxy, so did their power weaken. Wanting to preserve balance, the Father, patriarch of the Mortis Gods, sang into being a new form of life, which she called the Maiar, to go out into the universe and protect balance. One such Maia, perhaps the most powerful among them, was known by the name of Mairon. He was sent to show the mortals the way of architecture and engineering, to create great inventions and to understand the universe. Through his teachings, many species learned to travel across the stars, to survive the Son's cruel void.
The Son saw these Maiar as just another challenge to his power, and so he sang to them, corrupting many, but not all. The Son breathed greed into Mairon, and in doing so, turned him into a force of conquest. Mairon taught these ancient species to worship him, to go out into the universe in his name and claim everything for themselves. The galaxy would have order and the rule of law, even if it meant the death of freedom itself. This would be life's first introduction to war. The First War, it was called.
The Daughter would come to create artificial species to aid in the coming wars. Some we built to be fair and wise, while others were designed to be strong and brave. The Son hated these races, and quickly corrupted many among them to become wretched and impatient, weak-minded and blood-lusting.
The galaxy burned beneath the Mortis Gods' petty contests, and the Father, seeing the damage done, would have no more. With all of his remaining magic, the Father plucked his children from the galaxy, gave them a physical form, and imprisoned them all on Mortis, a planet where they could squabble in isolation. Their songs of war faded and the races fell back into peace, but the echoes of that war remained. Mairon remained, and so peace would not last.
Mairon looked out across the galaxy, and saw many species. He saw their hunger not only for survival, but for a master, to guide them through such a chaotic and cruel cosmos. He spoke to them, whispering comfort into their hearts, and many joined him. Through temptation and deceit, he formed a great empire across the stars, but his will to master the galaxy would not be satiated. He needed a conduit, a tool to funnel his intent across every mind in the galaxy, to rule over every mind, strong or weak.
Disguised as a being of light, and introducing himself as 'Sauron,' he offered gifts across the stars: rings that would offer the user a greater connection with the force. In secret, he made a ring of his own, to absorb the Mortis God's essence, now spread over the cosmos. Sauron was stopped only by the wisdom of the Quendi, a species of force-sensitives, first of the Daughter's races. It was they who warned the rest of the galaxy of the coming doom, for they were one of few races to remember the First War.
Alas, they could not reach every world, and a third of the galaxy fell willingly to Sauron's will, and the ring, while not at full power, was still capable of great destruction. When it awakened, it was with such calamity that nearly a quarter of the galaxy was thrown into madness. Black holes swallowed worlds, stars collapsed into supernovae, and gravity wells smashed civilizations into oblivion. The people of the galaxy would come to know his realm as the Chaos, or, the Unknown Regions.
With his ring forged and with untold power, Sauron proclaimed war against the rest of the galaxy, to take by force what he could not take by subterfuge. However, striking too soon would be his fatal error, for his armies were outnumbered by a hopeful galaxy, and he was driven back and besieged at his fortress on Mordor, a planet hidden deep beyond the borders of known space.
The siege would last for decades, and many of the galaxy's races suffered heavily for it, but Sauron's power, while great and terrible, was eventually undone. Alas, when it came time to dispose of the ring, its evil seemed too powerful for any mortal to defy, and so the ring passed into many hands over many eons.
Eventually, it would reach Korriban, the Sith homeworld. The Sith took the ring, and through it, honed their studies of the dark side. Other races and empires would come to conquer Korriban, all drawn by the ring's call. Killik, Rakata, all would be pushed back by the Sith.
Eventually, the ring was simply lost to time, buried in the debris of a thousand battles, and finally, forgotten beneath the Korriban sands. Sauron, it seemed, had been truly defeated.
Millennia came and went, and the Maia remained absent from the politics of the galaxy. Jedi would fight Sith, Sith would attack Jedi, and on it went, balanced forevermore. The Maiar could rest, knowing that the galaxy was, in the grand scheme of things, safe.
That was, until Darth Sidious.
By the time the Maiar realized the danger he posed to the balance, it was too late. The Jedi were purged, and finally, the Sith ruled the galaxy. This, on top of a growing evil in the Unknown Regions, spelled doom for the Maiar, who knew all too well the omens of things to come. Perhaps Sauron was not defeated. Perhaps he had been waiting for the time when the dark side had finally conquered the galaxy. It was time for the Maiar to act.
Alas, many among the Maiar had grown too lost in their own business, while others had simply lost hope. Still others had disappeared into the outer rim, unwilling to participate in galactic events. For one Maia in particular, however, there was no other choice but to act. That was their reason for being, and so that was what he would do.
And so this Maia, whose name had been forgotten to all but the oldest beings, was not a behemoth of strength or martial skill. He was not a smith or a weaver of poems. He was, however, wise and very kind, and he found quite often that kindness itself was enough. Now, drawn by the need to act, the old wizard found himself on Korriban. Years of research, sorting through endless mad scribblings and vague references on ancient tablets, suggested that the ring had been here all this time, slowly twisting the world into a place of evil. Part of him hoped that he was wrong, and another part knew he couldn't afford to be.
The temples leaned, half-sunk in the sand, crumbling and eroded from Korriban's winds. Walls lined with ten-thousand years of history, now eroded and dull, and those great warlords who thought themselves as gods, were now abandoned, forgotten. The spirits of many dark lords haunted those halls, who protested and bellowed at the wizard's presence. "Old greybeard! Barely able to stand atop his own two feet without a walking stick. He wanders, as he always has, but why do you wander here? To what end do you emerge from your negligence, from your cowardice? You emerge from the recluse of history now, after you waited in silence for untold eons, and to what end? You have waited too long, old man. You are a relic, just as much as these temples! You no longer belong in this tale. You will find nothing here but dust."
The wizard, beard as long as his knees, eyebrows as wild as desert winds, replied, confidently, and with a voice that shook the walls, "Be gone, servants of the dark! Your power comes from the shadows, but only you are slaves to it!"
The wizard touched his staff to the ground, releasing a pure white light over the temple. At once, the shadows that haunted him were no more, and were silenced. So many ghosts in one place, this was truly home to a great darkness. Only a Maia could recognize Maiar power, and certainly, there was plenty present in this place. Yet, in all the tombs he searched, through all the chambers and secret passageways, there was no sign of the ring. He wandered across the desert dunes for many days, yet the ring's power did not grow any stronger. That was, until the fifth day, when his eyes looked out over the sands, and what he saw was much worse than he could have imagined. What he found was a mining operation.
Giant holes dug into the sands, filled with abandoned excavation droids. The site could not have been older than a week, for when he approached, some of the droids still had enough power to greet him, with grinding gears, crackling voices and slowing tongues.
The droids were stamped with Imperial bar codes. The ring had been taken in the worst case scenario.
"Confound it all! Palpatine, you damned fool!" He had to intercept whatever craft now possessed the ring. Pressing a hand on the sands, he saw visions of an Inquisitor's craft, but nothing more. Cursing his own tardiness, the wizard apologized to the droids for their cruel fate. "I am sorry, dear friends. I wish I could help you, but now, there is no time."
"Whatever could the Emperor want with such a tiny, little thing?"
Voss Voidfall. To be near her was to feel empty. Her pale skin, sunken face, thin lips, flat, dark hair, and wide charcoal eyes, gave clues to the miserable world in which she was born.
Umbra Prime was a world of perpetual night, where the clouds never yielded, where winds cut like paper. It was a world of razor-sharp rocks and unscalable mountains. Those who did not adapt, perished. The inhabitants of Umbra Prime could not remember how they ended up on such a planet, but genetic analysis suggested that once, very long ago, they were human.
Their pupils had dilated enough to coat the entire surface of their eyes. Their skin had become nearly transparent, to absorb every ounce of sunlight that penetrated the clouds above. Their hands grew coarse to navigate the sharp, rocky surface. Their teeth and jaws grew strong and sharp, to chew through their prey's tough hides. On a planet as dreary as theirs, to feel hope or despair was a death sentence. No one with strong emotions lasted very long on Umbra Prime. To other species, Umbrians might have come across as cold, cruel and utterly remorseless, even going as far to say that Umbrians felt nothing at all. This, of course, was false, and Umbrians still felt close ties with family and community, but nothing more.
For millennia, Umbra Prime was left undisturbed, partially due to its unappetizing climate, but mostly for its lack of resources. No minerals, hardly any metals, and no strategic value. It was a rock, left to rot, forgotten by the galaxy, and so the Umbrians were left undisturbed for many millennia.
Their eventual discovery was owed to the Imperial Inquisition, who in their search for hidden Jedi, had expanded their search to even the most unlikely planets. Upon their discovery, Umbrians were nearly classified as non-sentient by how they crawled about the jagged landscape like animals. Upon further investigation, they were found to have language, art, poetry and even a culture of body art. The ink for their tattoos was extracted from a local glowing fungus, and so their tattoos also glowed dimly, only really visible in the dark.
Umbrians were not only a dreadful sight, but their very presence created an inexplicable unease. It was something that force-sensitives were most offended by, but all sentient beings could tell that something about them was wrong. Umbrians were a force-suppressant species. Force-sensitives around them, within a certain radius, could not harness their power to nearly the same degree. The more of them there were, the more suppressed the force became.
For the Grand Inquisitor, these indifferent and callous creatures were invaluable weapons against the Jedi. Oddly enough, they required little encouragement. Umbrian mythology spoke of their god, the Lightsmith, who could only reveal himself to those who pierced the great dark of Umbra Prime. For the Umbrians, to travel through space in search of him was akin to a great pilgrimage.
When the Inquisition offered them an escape from Umbra Prime, they accepted without question. Perhaps, after so many eons trapped, they could finally go out in search of this Lightsmith. This was Voss' hope, to one day touch the light of the Smith, to remember how to feel again, to become whole. It was why Voss joined the Inquisition in the first place.
Voss, like many other Umbrians, had no bias one way or another about the Jedi. They had been cut off from galactic history for a very long time, and so hunting Jedi was no more immoral than a predator hunting prey. Umbrian inquisitors worked alone, far from the other inquisitors, for obvious reasons. For troopers under their command, they required specialized training to handle their shuddersome aura.
As such, Voss was called upon by the Emperor himself, for a special task: "There is an artifact, a relic, that I want you to find for me. Any other creature would fall to its evil. I cannot even trust the others with this. They are too weak for such a relic to fall into their hands. It must be you to go out and find this artifact. Only you, my trusted night-hunter."
"What is our quarry?" Voss asked, to which the Emperor explained, "Nothing more than a trinket of gold, whose identity is revealed by fire. A ring, my child."
"A ring?" Voss asked, confused. "What power could a ring possibly possess?"
"Through me," Palpatine explained with a cruel smile, "Its power would be unlimited. There is something coming. A shadow in the Unknown Regions is growing its strength. We need every advantage, and with this ring, I will create peace, for all time. No battle station or superweapon will compare. No rebellion will ever threaten our stability again. No shadow lurking in the Unknown Regions will hope to challenge my perfect galaxy! I have sent you the coordinates to begin your search."
"Something so small, how do you know where to look?" Voss asked.
The Emperor, yellow eyes shining from under his hood, pressed a button on his armrest. A compartment in the armrest opened, revealing a small orb, an obsidian sphere, brushed with wisps of gray across its surface. Its dark surface reminded Voss of her homeworld, the first time she saw it from orbit. Resting his hand over the sphere, the Emperor explained, "I have seen its location. The ring is on Korriban. Go, and when you return, you shall be free to go off on your pilgrimage. Do not fail me."
Voss knelt, head bowed. "I shall see it done. Gifts upon you."
The coordinates brough Voss to Korriban, to the middle of a barren, windswept desert. The ruins of ancient temples and of terrible battles jutted from the sands. Great wrecks of ancient battleships lay sunken in the distance, and ancient helmets, blasters, spears and banners poked from the dunes like the stumps of a dead forest. The stories warned that to set foot on Korriban was to be overwhelmed by the dark side, yet even as Voss' feet touched sand, she felt absolutely nothing. Her crew, however, could sense an evil in that desert that she could not, and so they remained on the ship.
The excavation droids worked for weeks, digging and sifting, making hole after hole, and just when Voss began to worry, there it was, wrapped around the finger of a mummified warlord. Without a thought, Voss plucked the ring from the finger, and as she did so, the warlord's hand turned to dust. "Whatever power it held, it didn't save you, did it?" She asked the corpse.
A test of fire would confirm the ring's identity. Having no method to create fire quickly, Voss placed the ring in the sand, and drew her blaster. Heat is heat, she reasoned. If it cannot survive a single blaster bolt, what superweapon could it be? One shot sent the ring flying. Voss plucked it from the sand, found that it was still intact. There it was; a strange set of glowing writing along the band, which quickly faded. This was the relic, no question.
And now, in hyperspace back to Coruscant, Voss glowered over the ring for hours and felt…nothing. "What power do you hold, little one?"
Then, like a whisper in the back of her mind, she felt a sudden urge to put it on. She had never felt such an intrusive thought before. It was like a trance, one which she only barely shook herself out of. When she looked down, her fingers had nearly subconsciously slipped the ring over her finger. True terror was a rare emotion for Umbrians, but to have her mind infected with foreign thoughts filled Voss with dread. Without another thought, she placed the artifact in a secure case and placed it in her quarters, far from prying eyes.
She told no one where it was hidden, and yet, she had caught a trooper and an intelligence officer idling by her door, their eyes glazed over, their hands mindlessly trying to open the locked door. When she questioned them, they awoke from the trance, and honestly admitted that they didn't remember how they got there.
"Back to your stations." Voss barked.
The intelligence officer, frowning, asked, "I know this mission is classified, but as your intelligence specialist, I believe I have a right to know what we're bringing back."
"You are much better off not knowing." Voss replied. "You have been ordered to return to your posts."
"What is in there?" The officer asked again.
"Just tell us." The trooper demanded.
"Ask again and I will see you both court-martialed!" Voss snapped. "Step back!"
Reluctantly, and seeing Voss's hand reaching for her sidearm, the two crewmembers obeyed, but before turning the corner, glanced back more than once. She retreated to her quarters, bolted the door, laid her blaster beneath her pillow, and lay down, wide awake. All she could imagine was the crew all standing silently outside her door. All night, she waited for the doorknob to jiggle. It never did.
Only a few hours before Coruscant. Somewhere out there, the Lightsmith waited for her to find him, and in a few short hours, she would be free to make her pilgrimage back into his warmth. With this comfort in mind, Voss found sleep.