HoloNet News BREAKING NEWS Monsters on Byblos

[The Storyteller]

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BREAKING NEWS

The Holonet New Network just has word that Byblos City is currently - as we speak - under attack by monsters. They are unknown creatures, it is not known how they got into the city, but they have. There is a massive swarm of them, innumerable. And within minutes the city has descended into complete chaos, planetary defence forces have been mobilized but we have received reports they have been overwhelmed swiftly and any attacks made to repel them were ineffective.

Moments ago a starfighter has collided with Senator Jana Kang's residence, causing a massive explosion, and the building collapsed into nothing but rubble. A source from the scene has confirmed that Jana Kang is dead.

WARNING: GRAPHIC / Click Here

We have received footage of the current ongoing attack. The monsters are tearing people apart, killing them, and/or eating them. Many buildings have collapsed in Byblos City. The streets lay with debris, ruined buildings, as well as corpses, blood, viscera, and body parts. We have footage of a swarm of monsters mowing down people on the ground trying to flee. Men, women, and childern. We have footage of them shrugging off blaster fire from the defense forces only for them to be violently killed.

This just in we have just received footage from a camera drone of a massive, large, hulking creature has just made a massive leap, landing on a starfighter, impaling the pilot and then leaving the starfighter to crash and explode into a crowd of people running for their lives.

The chaos is spreading all across Byblos. The capital city has no semblance of order or stability, now overrun with monsters. Communication has gone dark and all the planetary leaders are reported to be dead.

These creatures are unlike anything we've ever seen., and one thing is for certain, they can't be stopped.

 

[Kara Zaa Fenn]

While breaking news was on repeat at the spacestation cantina, Kara sat still at the bar and seemed fixated on her glass of Corellian whiskey. Thirty years ago she had done everything in her power to leave her homeworld in order to avoid being there whenever the inevitable next Sith invasion occured. She had helped rescue Sith Lords and launched their rescuers into legend, and for what? To get rich and offworld, basically. Kara had never cared for anyone but herself, her own well-being. Yet, watching the Sith tear apart her planet now wasn't something she could shrug away.

Were her parents still alive? What about her nieces and nephews, or her childhood friends. Kriff. Why was this Force-thing such an unstoppable and horrific threat.

Some part of her had wanted to show Dismas, and Crix, the planet she grew up on. Her old school, where she had spend the least amount of time, and the alleys or the HoloNet-café where she had done and got most of her early slicing and fixer jobs. She had always wondered if her favorite nightclub, The Homewrecker was still around.. but that was easy to answer right now: it wasn't. Not after today, at least.

"Kriff me. Boba's karking Dumplings," Kara suddenly gasped, her eyes going up towards the screen as she remembered he promise to the old droid. She was going to make it big and get him off Byblos, she had promised. Boba with his perfect dumplings was to be her private chef. Inside a penthouse filled with spice and loose men and women. That had been the dream, once.

No, some things you couldn't just let go, so she got her datapad and send out a message to her crew:

<Drop everything. Meet me on Loronar in 36 hours. Exfiltration job. High priority>​

There was no way Kara was going to let Boba the cooking droid with his perfect dumplings get destroyed on Byblos. She wasn't going to rescue that perfect dream of masculine programming and get herself that dream ending.

 

[Darth Tiamat]

Oh Byblos....Tiamat had so many memories from there. With all that had occurred to the helpless planet, it only seemed fitting for the world to come to its end with no real rhyme or reason, it was as it is, just collateral as the suffering of people was brought to their ends, finally. Their agony and hopelessness rippled across the star systems, it was near impossible to not feel the coldness that was unmistakable. This was of Raze's doing, a wound in the Force as his creations took what they wanted, feeding indiscriminately on those who just happened to be at the wrong place, wrong time.

Tiamat leaned forward on her seat, watching the feed pour in from the holonet, images, though blurry and quick, showed off what true darkness could create. It is magnificent... There was an echo, not in her head, but in her ear and she responded, "It certainly is..."

The woman blinked, startled by her own voice and she stood up, looking around, her senses reaching outward. She felt a tug at the corner of lip, whispers filled the room as she felt herself reaching, but the further she reached the further backwards she went, cast into the inky waters of her mind. The whispers grew louder, familiar, until she laid on the ground of the cold wooden floor boards beneath her childhood bed of her Corellian cottage. She had to hide, they were so close.

Lyra...
Lyra...
Lyra...
Lyra...
Lyra...
Lyra...
Lyra...
Lyra...​

Her name echoed in unison and the black hand burned into her chest, she covered her mouth with her palm to stop herself from screaming, the wisps of their eternal presence coming closer. She tried to think how she was going to escape, to protect Theia, and warn Emyrc and Jaikus, however all she saw were the blackened fingers and she shut her eyes tightly...

Opening them again, Tiamat was still in her office, the footage of Byblos continued on the holo and the woman sat unmoving, trying to decipher reality. Had she fallen asleep? She felt confused, unrested, if it were a dream, it was not comforting. Her comm beeped, a message from her daughter showing off a new trick she had been practicing, a smile returned and she felt herself beginning to relax,

"The agony she will feel..."

The voice returned and Tiamat stood up, knocking back her chair; but as she looked, no one else was present in the room, her stomach sunk as she turned her attention back to the holo and quickly switched it off as the monsters were shown again and again. She ran her fingers through her hair, thinking, feeling, knowing something was wrong. Something was very wrong.

 

[Charlotte Le'Anna]

You couldn’t love a monster because a monster would never love you back. You were their toy…their possession. You couldn’t love a monster even if you were one yourself. Charlotte could not remember a time she felt anything other than tremendous affection for herself. Had she loved her father? Maybe as a girl. Those feeling were gone by the time she burst his heart in his chest. What had she felt for Art? No love…affection maybe…until it no longer suited her. Cairo? Perhaps like a little brother. Above them all she had always loved herself best.

She did not love Raze. You couldn’t. She knew the minds he ensnared. The others with which he most certainly played. The Queen Mother suffered no delusions. She was but one of many. But she was one. And there was Byblos caving in on itself. Eldritch horrors rampaging across the surface. The very target of her ire brought suddenly to their knees. The galaxy would not know what it meant. Could not know what it meant…but Charlotte did.

It was a sign as clear as day. A message from Raze himself as good as writing in the sky. The Queen Mother sighed and smiled. A love letter written in blood. How would she reply was the question? An equally brutal display for her lord and master. Slowly, she stood from her throne. The wheels in her head turning. Only the grandest of slaughters could possibly serve.

@Sreeya