Kaelus Virek Thorne
Acolyte of the Obsidian Court
“There is no silence here, only the pause between screams.”
Objective; Track Down Information on the Zeffo Ruins. Uncover the Tomb of Kujet.
The skies above Dathomir were wrong.
Not simply red—bruised. Hung like blood in water. No break in the clouds, no stars, no moon. The storms didn’t rage. They loitered. Watching. Waiting. Even the lightning felt staged, like a warning without teeth. But Kaelus didn’t believe in warnings. Not here. Not now.
This was exactly what he had come for.
The jungle stretched endlessly around him. Not lush, but suffocating, as if the planet had grown too much and too fast and now choked on its own breath. Trees with bark like charred bone scraped at one another overhead. Their roots pulsed, black veins snaking across the ground. Things moved beneath them that were never seen, only felt, in that aching space just behind the eyes.
The Force here was not a current. It was a snare.
He stepped carefully, though not with fear. Not anymore. Fear was a thing he had carried once, but he had fed it to the fire in his soul until it was something better. Sharper. Hungrier.
The Nightsisters were out there, somewhere in the haze. He had not come to see them. Not yet. What they called magic was just another dialect of power, and Kaelus had no patience for the rituals of those still finding their footing. Let them burn herbs and call down ghosts. He sought something older.
Something buried.
The first ruin had greeted him like a broken throat gasping through the earth. A mound of vine-choked stone, half-collapsed, humming faintly when he drew close. He had touched it and the hum became a sound in his head. Not words. Not yet. But emotion. Grief, vast and inhuman. Rage. A pride so thick it nearly drowned him. And beneath it all… a whisper of a name.
Kujet.
It echoed like a curse.
The Nightsisters didn’t speak of it, not openly, but he’d heard their words in passing. The Sleeper in the Stone. The Starless Throne. The Echo That Devours Names. They feared it.
Good.
Kaelus didn’t fear it. He understood it.
Dathomir wasn’t broken. It had simply been witness to too much. War. Betrayal. Extinction. The Force here was raw, unrefined, truthful in ways the Jedi could never tolerate. This world remembered what the galaxy tried to forget. Kujet had ruled here once—not with armies, but with will. They had bled the planet into reverence.
And then?
They fell. Like they all did.
Kaelus didn’t come to stop it.
He came to learn how it happened so he could do better. Improve on an outdated ideology to hopefully avoid following in their steps.
He paused at the edge of a ravine, the red mist rising slowly from below like breath from an open grave. The jungle fell silent around him.
Somewhere beneath, the tomb waited.
It did not want to be found.
It wanted to be earned.
Kaelus smiled. And kept walking.
He had never known of the Zeffo prior to a month ago. Stuck in the mindset of most Acolytes, he sought to make himself useful to the Obsidian Court. To rise above the rank and file. Kaelus had lost count of the nights spent trawling the library in search of knowledge. It was by pure happenstance that he came across an entry on the Zeffo. Little more than a name and vague description.
They were an ancient race of Force Sensitives. Advanced the likes of which the Republic could only hope to imitate. Ruins of the extinct species dotted the galaxy, all telling the same tale. They fell to Civil War. For all their progression, all their power, they were beholden to the same struggle as the rest of the sapient species of the universe. Good versus Bad. Light versus Dark. Jedi versus Sith.
It was time to unearth the past.
Perhaps then he might avoid making the same mistakes.
Objective; Track Down Information on the Zeffo Ruins. Uncover the Tomb of Kujet.
The skies above Dathomir were wrong.
Not simply red—bruised. Hung like blood in water. No break in the clouds, no stars, no moon. The storms didn’t rage. They loitered. Watching. Waiting. Even the lightning felt staged, like a warning without teeth. But Kaelus didn’t believe in warnings. Not here. Not now.
This was exactly what he had come for.
The jungle stretched endlessly around him. Not lush, but suffocating, as if the planet had grown too much and too fast and now choked on its own breath. Trees with bark like charred bone scraped at one another overhead. Their roots pulsed, black veins snaking across the ground. Things moved beneath them that were never seen, only felt, in that aching space just behind the eyes.
The Force here was not a current. It was a snare.
He stepped carefully, though not with fear. Not anymore. Fear was a thing he had carried once, but he had fed it to the fire in his soul until it was something better. Sharper. Hungrier.
The Nightsisters were out there, somewhere in the haze. He had not come to see them. Not yet. What they called magic was just another dialect of power, and Kaelus had no patience for the rituals of those still finding their footing. Let them burn herbs and call down ghosts. He sought something older.
Something buried.
The first ruin had greeted him like a broken throat gasping through the earth. A mound of vine-choked stone, half-collapsed, humming faintly when he drew close. He had touched it and the hum became a sound in his head. Not words. Not yet. But emotion. Grief, vast and inhuman. Rage. A pride so thick it nearly drowned him. And beneath it all… a whisper of a name.
Kujet.
It echoed like a curse.
The Nightsisters didn’t speak of it, not openly, but he’d heard their words in passing. The Sleeper in the Stone. The Starless Throne. The Echo That Devours Names. They feared it.
Good.
Kaelus didn’t fear it. He understood it.
Dathomir wasn’t broken. It had simply been witness to too much. War. Betrayal. Extinction. The Force here was raw, unrefined, truthful in ways the Jedi could never tolerate. This world remembered what the galaxy tried to forget. Kujet had ruled here once—not with armies, but with will. They had bled the planet into reverence.
And then?
They fell. Like they all did.
Kaelus didn’t come to stop it.
He came to learn how it happened so he could do better. Improve on an outdated ideology to hopefully avoid following in their steps.
He paused at the edge of a ravine, the red mist rising slowly from below like breath from an open grave. The jungle fell silent around him.
Somewhere beneath, the tomb waited.
It did not want to be found.
It wanted to be earned.
Kaelus smiled. And kept walking.
He had never known of the Zeffo prior to a month ago. Stuck in the mindset of most Acolytes, he sought to make himself useful to the Obsidian Court. To rise above the rank and file. Kaelus had lost count of the nights spent trawling the library in search of knowledge. It was by pure happenstance that he came across an entry on the Zeffo. Little more than a name and vague description.
They were an ancient race of Force Sensitives. Advanced the likes of which the Republic could only hope to imitate. Ruins of the extinct species dotted the galaxy, all telling the same tale. They fell to Civil War. For all their progression, all their power, they were beholden to the same struggle as the rest of the sapient species of the universe. Good versus Bad. Light versus Dark. Jedi versus Sith.
It was time to unearth the past.
Perhaps then he might avoid making the same mistakes.
