Diplomacy To the New Empires Call | The Emperor & The Witch

[Darth Malvus]

Aboard the Shadow Eclipse — Sith Empire Border Space

Command Spire, Observation Deck Overlooking the Maelstrom Rift



The stars beyond the viewport twisted and churned as if stirred by the will of the Force itself. A thousand lights blinked from the surrounding escort fleet, while newly minted H.U.S.K. dreadnoughts and Obsidian-pattern destroyers moved into patrol formation with flawless precision.

Standing at the edge of it all, cloaked in shadows and silence, was Darth Malvus.

The Sith Lord’s eyes—burning crimson beneath his obsidian helm—watched the dark with measured calculation. Every flicker of starlight reflected in the polished armor of his chest plate as he reached forward and keyed in a transmission on the terminal before him. The air thickened with static as the encrypted channel opened.

His voice came through low and deliberate, as if weighing every syllable like a blade poised over the throat of a rival.

“To Sicarius Hekate… Darth Enchantress of the Nightsisters.”

“This is Darth Malvus. Lord of the Obsidian Court. Commander of the Shadow Eclipse. Architect of the storm to come.”

He paused, letting the silence draw taut.

“I know of your strength. Your command of Nightsister magick is unlike anything the Sith Empire has dared to embrace. Sorcery that runs deeper than the dark side as our academies teach it. Veraxis is formidable, yes… but he walks the path of Sith alchemy and illusion. You walk another path. One I seek to understand. And one I may need.”

Malvus turned from the viewport, folding his gauntleted hands behind his back. The war ahead was already unfolding in a hundred sectors—some with fire, others with whispers. Syngia was his. The Colundra plan was underway. Korriban loomed. And in every move, every breath, he felt the pieces sliding into place.

“There is a war coming. Not merely of power… but of ideology. The Empire is fractured. The old blood clings to Dromund Kaas. Korriban festers under delusions of ancient purity. The Outer Lords fight each other like starving wretches.”

“I will unify them. Or I will bury them.”

Another pause.

“You are invited to my flagship—the Shadow Eclipse. No tricks. No tests. I offer parley. Diplomacy. And a place at the table of what comes next.”

He leaned forward slightly, as if whispering into the void.

“If we are to destroy the dying legacy of these false Sith and rebuild something truly eternal… I would see you stand beside me. Not as a subordinate. But as a force they fear even more than myself.”

With that, the transmission ended, encoded with Obsidian encryption patterns known only to a handful of the galaxy’s darkest minds.

Darth Malvus straightened once more, turning to the tactical display where glowing sectors flickered red or gray—contested, claimed, or soon to be consumed. A new layer began to form over the map: ancient symbols, etched in green fire, matching Nightsister runes gathered from the databanks of long-dead inquisitors.

He whispered to himself, voice like thunder trapped behind metal.

“Every piece must fall into place. And the Queen of Shadows must make her choice.”

Now, he waited. The Shadow Eclipse hung poised between stars—like a dagger aimed at the heart of the Sith Empire’s illusion.


Tag: @Sicarius Hekate

 

[Sicarius Hekate]

Sicarius pondered the message with deliberation. It was in some ways a tempting offer in other ways an unappealing one. Sicarius had no desire to get involved in the squabbling Sith factions that plagued the galaxy. She wanted simple things for a Sith Lord. Her own fiefdom to rule and experiment to her hearts content. Dxun if she could get it. There was a time when she had approached the Obsidian Court with the plans of her ships. She had hoped to forge an entire fleet on dark energy. Now the thought tired her a little as the dreams faded and new ones took over. She wanted a menagerie of beasts moulded with Nightsister Magics to be obedient to her. Every hunter knew to fear the wilds now imagine an army of them. Perhaps a collection of dark artefacts to go with it, and of course servants to tend to her whims and subjects for her experiments.

Oh she supposed she could build the ships as well. It would be a pity not to put all that hard work to good use.

As for waging wars of conquests. It was perhaps an amusing thought, but it would seem to take a lot of time away from her creations. Though she supposed there was some amusement in tactical thinking, and she was a little curious about the games of intrigue of court politics.

Perhaps allying with one of the great lords would be more than to her advantage, perhaps it would alleviate the sense of boredom she had developed. She had risen through the ranks of the Nightsisters after all and had ascended as high as she might. There was nothing left for her here to accomplish.

Sicarius sighed and idly stroked her two hounds. Vornskr’s modified with Nightsister magics to be more resilient, to hunt down rival force users and be completely obedient to her needs. They had swirlings dark purple smoke forever coiling around them marking them with Nightsister Magic.

“Very well we shall meet with the Dark Lord. To hear what he proposes. It may prove useful and will prove to be a novel distraction for a while.” Sicarius flicked her hand and the Nightsister Witches bowed and left the throne room.

…..

Sicarius came on her ship The Covenant. She thought it appropriate that she arrive to a diplomatic people in the mobile temple of her people. It was an ancient design, one which she had hoped to emulate. Primary to house a Nightsister Temple and home during times of crisis it still packed a punch should it be necessary.

“Enchantress we beg of you send an emissary. Treachery is the way of the Sith” One of her witches pleaded.

Sicarius laughed prettily.

“Of course it is. Otherwise this would not be so exciting. Calm yourself Sisters. Their may come a time when our paths no longer align with his, but for now I believe him sincere in wanting a discussion, and if not…” Sicarius shrugged “Kill as many as you can before you die.”

The Nightsisters bowed. “Yes Mistress”

Sicarius entered a shuttle with her escort a squad of Nightsisters and her two Vornskr to take her over to the Shadow Eclipse and was brought with full ceremony to Lord Malvus.

“You summoned me my lord” Sicarius stated with a curtesy and bow before rising with a slight smirk.

Some would consider it poor form to refer to themselves as being summoned right out of the gate, but for Sicarius it was a test to see if his imperiousness merely accepted it as his due or if he wanted a genuine dialogue or even partnership.

@Darth Malvus

 

[Darth Malvus]

The Shadow Eclipse loomed above like a jagged blade carved from shadow and silence. Its corridors, obsidian and red-lit, reverberated with power—a vessel not merely of war, but of judgment.

And at its heart, Darth Malvus waited.

When Sicarius entered, the doors sealed behind her with a hiss, muffling the sounds of the galaxy beyond. The Vornskr growled low, unnerved by the atmosphere—not fearful, but aware that they now stood in the presence of a predator older than their instincts could fathom.

Malvus sat upon the throne at the central dais of his command sanctum, not slouched in idleness, but poised with the stillness of one who required no theatrics to dominate a room. Black-and-silver armor shimmered faintly beneath his heavy robes, and his eyes—cold, depthless, and rimmed with the faintest scarlet light—regarded Sicarius without blinking.

Her words, her bow, her smirk—none of it seemed to disturb the stillness of the air around him.

Only when the last syllable faded did he rise.

“Sicarius of the Nightsisters,” Malvus spoke at last, voice low and resonant, “you arrive not as a petitioner… but as one who understands the value of power, and the boredom of stasis.”

He descended the steps slowly, each step an echo through the chamber like a war drum sounded in a tomb. His gaze passed over her beasts—his presence alone enough to make the Vornskr inch backward, instincts at war with enchantment.

“You seek a fiefdom,” he said, circling her now like a wraith in orbit. “A sovereign domain to rule, shape, and fill with your beasts and your experiments. That can be arranged. In time, earned or given.”

A pause.

“You crave creation more than conquest. And yet you came. That speaks of hunger beneath the bone, a curiosity that outweighs your contempt.”

Malvus stopped in front of her again. Close enough that she could feel the weight of his presence—not oppressive, but undeniable. Like the edge of a blade held against silk.

“I did not summon you,” he said at last, voice low but absolute. “I invited you. Because the Court does not merely demand obedience—it rewards vision.”

He turned then, gesturing for her to follow as he approached the holo-display of several sectors—including Dxun, among others.

“There is a world in the Outer Rim—a dead moon, long forgotten. No cities. No populations. But veins of dark energy run beneath its crust. Ripe for shaping. I will grant it to you as your dominion. A proving ground for your beasts… your relics… your designs. In exchange, you will serve the Obsidian Court when called, not as a servant… but as a Warden of Shadows.”

He looked back over his shoulder, red eyes narrowing with something akin to amusement—dark, sharp, amused by her boldness.

“You are not the first to test me, Nightsister. But perhaps you will be the first I deem worthy to stand beside me rather than beneath.”

Another pause.

“Shall we see what we might become together, Sicarius? Or do your beasts hunger only for isolation?”

The chamber waited in silence, the ship itself seeming to hold its breath.


Tag: @Sicarius Hekate @Sicarius

 

[Sicarius Hekate]

Sicarius smirk widened and then she let out at a pretty little laugh that developed into a cackle. She clapped her hands in delight.

“Oh very good. Just the right amount of enticing and condescension designed to provoke a challenge from me, a desire to prove myself and my capabilities wrapped up in an offer of giving me everything I desire. Only a petulant child would refuse out of sheer desire to be contrary. Very good.”

Sicarius laughed and shook her head in wry amusement at well played gambit.

“Now do you have any refreshments? Perhaps some water with just a tinge of blood for my Hounds? It makes them salivate you see to associate blood with water. Oh yes I should introduce you. This is Darth and Lord. I get a little tingle at the idea of calling them to heel or attack at my command with those names.”

“Now then I am well aware you may give me everything I want. My fiefdom, my creations, my fleet and I’ll even admit to a little curiosity when it comes to conquest of battle and war. As for the intrigue that would no doubt follow with my position so high in your court” Sicarius wiggled her fingers from side to side “It could prove an amusing distraction until it became an intrusion at any rate.”

“I am well aware of what you can offer me my Lord”

The hound glanced at her ready for a command.

“What perhaps not concerns but causes me to doubt the value of your offer is the leash that comes with it. The one that says. HEEL!” Both Hounds sat down instantly.

“I value power a great deal, enough to be tempted by your offer as you intended, but I must admit to some feelings towards freedom as well. You imply you are open to an alliance of partners, but Nightsisters are not Sith not quite. We don’t spend our lives looking over our shoulder for our apprentices to stab us in the back some day. Nor our allies if we are smart enough.”

“How do I know you won’t find me a threat or inconvenience or just plain tire of me someday? For my part I can assure you if you should believe it I have no designs on your empire. As you said a fiefdom, a powerful position at court all the space and freedom to embark on my designs and creations. Perhaps a little conquest on your behalf or an amusing diversion of intrigue, but rule? Over a Sith Empire constantly glancing at those under me waiting to prove themselves worthy of taking my position?”

Sicarius yawned

“It sounds like a thoroughly boring full time occupation. I have more important and interesting things to do with my power than having its only purpose be keeping it from my own people.” Sicarius grunted and shook her head. “I studied Sith Magic to enhance my own not join the perverted inevitable suicidal death cult.”

“We Nightsisters value loyalty. Loyalty to the Clan above all else. Else mine own clan would not have come here despite there just reservations. They are loyal. To me.”

“So I have given you my assurances of your own position is secure in regards to my ambition. Oh I know you would say you had no near to fear me in the first, but I prefer to make it clear in any case. Perhaps a part of you deep down is even a little disappointed I am not a worthy challenger for your throne.”

Sicarius shrugged.

“Well I’d say I wish I could be sorry to be a disappointment, but I am feeling quite honest it appears.”

“Now what assurances do I have that I will not become yet another of your slaves or a subject of your ire should you deem me a threat?”

 

[Darth Malvus]

Malvus stood unmoved through Sicarius’ tirade—through her laughter, her mockery, her cunning reveals and staged candor. He did not blink, nor did he bristle. He simply listened, as one might to a storm—not because it threatened him, but because its rhythm revealed the truth of the winds.

Only once she was finished—once the words, the posturing, the leash-snapping dominance displays had all been cast like bones across the floor—did he speak.

Slowly.

Precisely.

“I do not fear disappointment, Sicarius,” Malvus said, his voice a blade sheathed in shadow. “Because I do not offer crowns to amuse myself. I offer purpose—and I do not extend it lightly.”

He approached the two Vornskr, and with a raised hand, let the Force roll off his palm like gravity. Not as a threat—but as presence. Even beasts honed by Nightsister magick knew ancient authority when they felt it. They did not cower. But they watched.

“You speak of leashes as though the galaxy itself is not a collar around the neck of every being who dares to rise above the dirt. You wish for freedom? Then you already live under illusion, witch. There is no freedom without power to keep it. And there is no power without alignment, without order, without structure.”

He turned his gaze back to her, unblinking.

“You mistake the Court for the Sith of old. You think I built this empire so I could sit atop a throne of knives, waiting to be stabbed like a fool in an opera. No. I forged the Obsidian Court to end that rot. I command monsters. I do not tolerate parasites.”

He motioned to the darkness surrounding them—the quiet hum of control that defined the Shadow Eclipse.

“Your strength is your own. Your will, your own. But if you wish to walk among my dominion, you do not do so outside it. You walk with a banner, not a leash.”

A pause. Then a slight tilt of his head.

“Will I grow weary of you someday? If you stagnate, if your mind dulls, if your vision dies—then yes. As I would with any failed experiment. But so long as you create, so long as you build, so long as your mind fuels something greater than your own satisfaction—you will never be a slave here.”

Then, with something close to a smirk:

“And if I did tire of you, Sicarius, you wouldn’t have time to ask why. You’d be dead before the thought left your lips.”

A beat of silence.

Then he turned toward the side, gesturing toward a small, elegant black-clad droid bearing a silver tray of obsidian goblets and a crystal bowl of crimson-tinged water.

“For the hounds.”

And with quiet finality, he added:

“You want assurances? Here they are: serve the Court, not my vanity. Fuel it with your wildness, not your rebellion. Thrive, Sicarius—and I will give you the galaxy’s forgotten places to mold into nightmares and wonders alike.”

He stepped back onto the dais, resuming his place—not to look down on her, but to end the game of posture and retort.

“My empire is not a death cult. It is an engine. Help me power it… or do not. But never insult us both by pretending we are bound by anything but choice.”


Tag: @Sicarius @Sicarius Hekate

 

[Sicarius Hekate]

“Hmm” Sicarius hummed to herself as she considered the proposal. “So as long as I keep my edge and continue to fuel your empire with my creations I am, well not safe exactly. I don’t imagine service with you would ever be safe. It would be boring if it were, but so long as I am useful I have a place.”

“Hmm interesting. It might be the very motivation I need to continue my projects once I’ve started them. I tend to be a mercurial being at heart. I grow easily bored, but I suppose if I grow tired of my labs I may be useful on the battlefield or at court. Perhaps I’ll even start my own academy of Sorcery, Spying and Science. I imagine there will always be something that fuels my fire.”

Sicarius said this outloud half thinking half toying with Malvus and the ideas as they came to her. She knew he didn’t particular care but it was amusing nonetheless even if only to establish the point that neither did she.

Sicarius nodded to herself sharply.

“Very well you have a new recruit and my Nightsisters with me. I shall even swear an oath of fealty though my Nightsisters first oaths will be to me. You have their loyalty through my own. I’ll not have you usurping your authority over them directly. I believe you when you say you have no desire to sleep on a bed of knives, so I hope you’ll respect that neither do I. I doubt they would even swear such an oath to do so they would have to renounce their oaths to me which are magically binding unto death.”

“Now I’ll need facilities until I get that moon you promised me. I assume you’ll want creatures to serve your armies in battle. Very well I have several designs using Sith alchemy Nightsister witchcraft and genetic splicing. They’re handlers will need to have some connection to the force to harness them properly at first until they are either trained or unless you prefer control chips. I find control chips to be rather crude and limiting, might as well have droids but it can be done, on a mass scale much more easily I’ll grant you.”

“Oh as for the ships we discussed on our first meeting. The designs are fine, but perhaps impractical for mass production. Pity they could have been fun hmm I’ll see what I can do with them. I’ll need a factory to produce anything substantial”

“Oh and I’ll need subjects for my experiments. Preferably human or near human. It is the easiest most maluable DNA to work with. Quite probably a lot of them.” Sicarius frowned as she ticked off her requests one by one. “Oh yes I nearly forgot students Sith students, with agile enough minds to learn new crafts of their powers, not just dumb brutes you understand- although if you like you could start a system of punishment for failures to wind up in one of my labs”

Sicarius giggled at the thought.

“Oh and yes we have Nightbrothers. Zabraks who are a sub clan to our own superior one. They are occasionally useful. For breeding and entertainment if nothing else” Sicarius gestured to her own half zabrak heritage of horns on her forehead. “I would be happy to gift some to you as cannon fodder for your next campaign as down payment for my next creations.”

@Darth Malvus

 

[Darth Malvus]

Malvus let her speak. He let her giggle, tick off her list of demands, indulge in her self-amusement and intellectual superiority. He had no need to interrupt. There was always something clarifying about watching a storm swirl within the bottle. Sicarius was a volatile cocktail—poison and brilliance in one—and now she had declared herself a citizen of his empire. He would waste no time putting her to use.

“I would not insult your Nightsisters with feigned dominion,” Malvus said at last, voice deep and precise. “Your loyalty is the conduit through which theirs flows. That is acceptable—so long as your word does not bend.”

He stepped from the dais, motioning for a nearby holoprojector. A series of rotating schematics appeared mid-air: biological constructs, lab designs, runic diagrams of Sith ritual chambers. With a flick of his hand, he conjured a sprawling map of his current mobile laboratories and research ships.

“You will have access to three of our existing mobile laboratories—The Crucible, Dark Horizon, and Kyrion’s Maw. Fully staffed, equipped with Sith alchemy forges, Nightsister weavers, and cybernetic augmentation facilities. Until your moon is raised, these ships are your domain. Dr. Rul is already conducting dark synthesis projects aboard the Crucible. You’ll find his mind twisted, but useful. You may share or dissect his efforts as needed.”

He tilted his head slightly, tone deepening.

“Veraxis, my Shadow, was a master of Sith alchemy and sorcery long before he became my right hand. He has students—twenty-three of them currently—each trained in alchemical doctrine, ritual channeling, genetic infusion, and weapon-binding. Some are ready. Others are failures. You may have both. Teach the worthy, reshape the weak. If they break, let their broken pieces be useful.”

Another flick of his hand—schematics shifted to show control arrays and implants.

“As for your creations—control chips will be embedded. Not to replace their spirit… but to protect against it. Fail-safes, kill switches, remote overrides. Not as command… but as contingency. Even the most loyal can be corrupted. Or distracted. And I do not tolerate wildfires in my armies.”

A slight pause. His eyes glinted faintly.

“Think of them not as chains—but as tools. Sith alchemy is already laced into the cores of our ships, our beasts, our machines. Your creatures will be no different. If we combine your bloodcraft with our sigil-weaving, and Veraxis’ transmutational matrices, we may even create beings capable of shifting during battle—evolving in real time.”

He let the thought hang in the air like smoke.

“As for subjects… you will have them. Near-humans, pure humans, failed apprentices, captured heretics. You may take from the breeding pits in the Rimward Fringe. Or use the remnants of Eriadu’s former population—plenty survived the bombardment, for now.”

Then, with a slight, cruel smirk:

“And yes, you may have Nightbrothers for your work. I do not need gifts of warriors. But cannon fodder that breeds and bleeds is always welcome.”

Malvus folded his hands behind his back, gaze steady.

“You have your court, Sicarius. Your students will come. Your monsters will be tested. And your oath—so long as it is kept—will not be questioned. You are now a part of something far older, far darker, and far more ambitious than your Clan ever dared dream.”

Then, almost as an afterthought:

“If your designs for the ships are too complex for mass production… make them scarce. Not fleets. Prototypes. One-of-a-kind horrors that carve legends across star systems. A thousand ships bore the galaxy. One unkillable myth terrifies it.”

He turned back toward the shadowed corridor leading to the bridge, voice low and final:

“Begin immediately.”

Tag: @Sicarius @Sicarius Hekate