{Flashback: 1,015 ABY} Berth of Darkness

[Jax Vos]

Viras Naq sat in meditation. She had been stranded on Rakata Prime for at least a year. She had been funneled through Chiss space and was left there. She was told to find her own way out. There was just one problem: she had no ship and no one had come for her within the year. Likely she would be be alone for the next several years. She knew that the Alliance had been defeated, and the Jedi had put their tails between their legs and ran for cover. This was the most frustrating thing was that she had been hoping that the Jedi would be able to help the Imperial Knights to bring back the Empire. Though now the galaxy would be run by the Sith, hopefully a rebellion would rise up and at least democracy could survive if the goodness of the Empire never returned.

The Chiss had fallen apart around the same time that she had been "released." If it had happened before or after she was still unsure. Either way she was living alone on a deserted planet. The former home of the Rakata. No one had lived here in centuries and now she was the only sentient inhabitant.

The former Imperial Knight breathed in. She had just killed a gizka, and now she needed to cook it. She looked at the hut she had made for herself. It would take at least ten minutes to get a fire going. Then another twenty to cook it properly. The Mirialan shook her head. Life was hard and knowing that she was secluded from the world made it even worse.

Why am I here!? she shouted, unsure of what or who she was talking to. She was tired of being alone. She had even begun to dabble into powers that were not exactly normal. She had grown to hate the Jedi and the Sith equally. She knew that the Chiss had been trying to save her, but they had made her a recluse.


Viras breathed in and carried the dead animal into her hut. She needed to eat and this animal would serve her next two meals. If there was one thing she had learned in her time on this planet it was the conservation of food, and that no one truly cares about anyone else.

 

[Ben]

Lehon. Yet another cold lead in a dying trail. It was not the search for anything in specific; more a meticulous – albeit redundant – cataloguing of the ancient places of the galaxy. He had already burnt through most, those he could easily reach, that was. Joshua had never expected to find much that he had not found earlier in life during his routing and digging. Nothing he had the means to uncover at least. After all, why would he presume to find treasures that had remained hidden from far more powerful Dark Lords of the Sith and vastly wiser Jedi Masters. He was not. That was the answer. He accepted. That did not mean that the situation did not necessarily niggle away at him, though.

Not least was the feeling of inadequacy compared to the goliaths of the past – especially in light of his cause – belittling and unsettling. No, that was not his main cause for irritation. He had wanted to find something. He may not have been logically expecting something, but the Force had been calling to him. Joshua had felt something growing ever nearer to him, he could not put his finger on it, but it was nearby now. Whether that meant nearby in terms of measurable distance, or nearby in time, he couldn’t tell. It was just close.

The arid rock-scape jutting out over a pristine beach, one of many on this landmass, afforded a magnificent vista. Not only was the clear sky and endless azure sea beautiful, but the huge, gleaming-silver outer-ring of a fallen space station refracted rainbows back from the dazzling sun somewhere between where he stood and the horizon.

The ripples of light seemed to come in pulses as the ribbon clouds passed through the hazy orange and blue sky above. Pulse. Pulse. Pulse. It was irregular… and the longer he stood and stared, the more it dawned on Joshua. This was not the wavering patterns of the sun, it just happened to be in near synchronisation; probably coincidental. This was a life force. This was a Force user, somewhere here, on Lehon. It was sentient.

The last time Hrass had checked, no sentient life inhabited the ‘lost’ planet of Lehon, Rakata Prime. But this was definitely exhibiting a conscious level of emotional fluctuation, it could at bare minimum think. Hrass head snapped away from the marvel in the direction of the pulses like a hunting dogs. It was back into the islands centre, towards a rock-scape out on the other side of a stunted thicket of forest. It would not take long, this land mass was just one part of an archipelago; a small part at that.

Taking off, he angled himself down-wind and made for an approach. Traversing the jungle was, in itself, not a challenge. He had just been through it, and the swamplands of Dagobah were far more treacherous. He was focusing on hiding his presence among the plethora of avian and invertebrate life forms, they acted as a mask. The only real challenge came when he was forced out onto the bare, rocky faces of the hills, it seemed that the ping-like signal was coming from this area.

He was without cover excepting the sharp ditches in between hills. He did not want to startle the thing, and if it had not already detected him, he doubted it would be something that he would pose an immediate threat to his life. Working his way up the face of a practically vertical hill to his side in a series of quick jumps and pull-ups, Joshua unveiled his presence. Shrouded in dark, shadowy robes that seemed to flicker around his wiry frame like a living symbiotic organism, Hrass stared passively down at the busying life form before him.