The Force of Magic [Star Wars SI]

[lord trilobite]

Boroda Orka, I really appreciate you doing such a great job translating. A lot of translated stuff is borderline unreadable but with this you can't even tell.

 

[readsalot]

Let's make one last round and head back to the Academy. Force forbid someone's gone and put the Dead Man to rest again…

Click to shrink...

TBH he probably is dead….again, at this point I'm thinking he likes it….. eh Wizards gotta have some quirks I guess

 

[Boroda Orka]

"Oh-ho-ho-hooo!" the portly man sitting across from me chuckled happily. "Master Dziha! Anything you want! Honestly! Do whatever you please on this damned planet! Even if you start taking the 'local attractions' apart stone by stone"—the face of the head of the Commerce Guild branch on Korriban twisted into a grimace of disgust—"I swear, every last one of us will pretend we never noticed a thing. In fact, it's always been that way!"

"Thank you, esteemed Macron," I said with a nod, keeping an impassively dignified expression on my face. My welcoming smile upon landing on Korriban had triggered a minor firefight which, only thanks to sheer luck and the composure of this short, rather amusing-looking man, had failed to turn into a genuine bloodbath. "Naturally, I have no need for such extremes, but I do intend to visit the 'local attractions' in the near future. I've heard and read quite a lot about the tombs of the ancient Sith, so I'm extremely curious."

"Anything! You! Want!" the man declared with deliberate solemnity, drawing in a deep breath and exhaling with obvious pleasure, as though savoring the very "taste" of the air. "But I do want to warn you again that it's extremely dangerous out there. Of the ten expeditions we sent into the tombs, eight disappeared completely, one came back only partially, and everyone in the one that returned intact went insane."

"I'll keep that in mind," I said with a thoughtful nod, inwardly rubbing my hands together and narrowing my eyes in bliss.

The planet looked extremely promising. And news of losses that severe… It wasn't that I was exactly happy about them, but something like that practically guaranteed the tombs hadn't been picked clean and that there was still something interesting left inside!

"And now," Kronus Macron said with a conspiratorial wink, "how about a little banquet? I guarantee you'll enjoy it! The cooks have gone all out for our dear guests and saviors!"

"Saviors, are we?" I said, feigning embarrassment while snorting inwardly.

"Benefactors!" the man laughed. "And don't even argue! I'm thinking of naming my son after you!"

"Uh…" This time I really was a little embarrassed. "I don't think that's a good idea. The Jedi couldn't handle another Siith."

The head of the Korriban branch burst out laughing again, flashing a genuinely warm, white-toothed smile.

---

"Phew, Boss. The locals creep me out." Romri thoughtfully sipped caf from her mug. "And I honestly can't decide which version scares me more: when they're gloomy and hostile, or when they're freakishly friendly."

Instead of the single day we had planned to spend at the Commerce Guild headquarters on Korriban's surface, we ended up staying there for four. A profitable little side job came up, then there was a genuinely decent banquet, after which several members of the crew had to be treated for hangovers… Only today had we finally managed to break free, so to speak.

Right now, we were sitting in the Rung's common room. The ship had landed at a suitable spot not far from the Moraband necropolis. There were landing pads large enough for us right by the tombs, but we had decided not to take unnecessary risks. Only three of us would be going to the burial complex itself: me, Arvik, and Karr. The others would stay behind aboard the ship, safely protected from whatever nasty surprises might be lurking out there. Mlada had complained, of course, but at least one Mando had to remain on the Rung.

"First, make someone feel absolutely miserable, then put everything back the way it was. That's it—you're their best friend." Arvik drummed his fingers against the helmet sitting on the table in front of him. "Can't really blame them for either the welcome we got or the way they started treating us after Boss fixed their problem. The locals damn near had a collective breakdown when Korriban finally stopped pressing down on their minds."

"Yeah," Mlada said with a shudder. "Being outside the Rung is genuinely creepy. You don't notice it at first, but after a couple of hours you start feeling like something's watching you. Not in a friendly way, either—more like a threat. Even the air starts to feel… heavy, I guess. Like it tastes wrong."

"An extremely high concentration of negatively aspected mana," I said. I'd explained this already, but the "atmosphere of Korriban" was a popular topic among the crew right now. "So high that people in poor health waste away and can even die, while sentients with low mental resilience and weak willpower go insane. Paranoia, obsessive thoughts, sociopathy… And those who already weren't entirely right in the head can go completely off the rails."

"Boss-sa, you mean that case where the security guy chopped up a couple dozen Guild workers?" the Gungan asked.

"That one. Macron mentioned the guy wasn't exactly a psychopath, but he'd been through a nasty mess on the Smuggler's Moon. Sending him here 'to rest' was a pretty reckless decision. Bureaucrats are bureaucrats everywhere. Still, I think the Commerce Guild will be a lot more careful about mistakes like that from now on. And they'll probably be more than happy to sign contracts with a couple of our malefics and necromancers. While we're at it, we might even scout out some land for an Academy branch—and perhaps buy it outright while Macron is still running things here."

"You didn't even charge them!" the Togruta burst out. Apparently, the mention of contracts and buying land had struck a nerve somewhere deep in her soul—the nerve labeled lost profit.

"You really shouldn't be so greedy, my little aurodium girl," I told her with an affectionate smile, while Mlada giggled merrily. "I've already wrung free deliveries of filled negative-energy reservoirs out of the Guild, and on top of that I got complete carte blanche to do whatever I want around the tombs. A man has to have some conscience."

"Conscience is something you listen to, not something you have," Karr guffawed, though he quickly deflated under Arvik's reproachful stare.

"Jokes that are tens of thousands of years old," Mlada sighed. "Brother, your sense of humor isn't just ancient. It's mummified."

"Force ghost of Sense of Humor, though," the Gungan agreed with a solemn nod. "Karr found it in ancient tomb of bit-bit shitty joker."

"For decades, our Mando studied the ancient wisdom of millennia-old recycled jokes, until his dead Teacher finally decided he was Ready!" Romri picked up the story.

"And so the ancient Evil broke loose upon the Galaxy," I joined in, unable to resist.

"And only the Great Mlada Vast stands between her brother and the Republic being plunged into the nightmare depths of shitty humor," our warrior declared smugly, lifting her chin.

"Oh, fuck all of you," the target of our attack said with feigned offense, making a moderately obscene gesture at everyone in the common room. "Nobody loves me except Talli!" The guy winked at the faintly smiling Dathomiri.

"In the Nightsister clan, witches are taught to ignore stale jokes." V'arna's faint smile turned into a mocking grin as she figuratively stabbed the Mandalorian in the back. The guy had been strutting around her like a peacock for days now, but the witch seemed completely uninterested in him. "By the way, Teacher, what did you do to block the Dark Side's influence on the Guild personnel?"

"An absorption barrier. The simplest kind of ritual-artifact complex, built on mana-conversion principles and powered by this world's natural background energy." I broke into a blissful smile. Sometimes it was nice to simply switch my brain off and work on something primitive. "Twenty ritual circles, each five meters across, absorb negative mana around the perimeter of the Guild complex and fill simple—and therefore rather bulky—quartz reservoirs. Then the inner conversion circle takes over, purifying the output from the reservoirs and sending already-neutral mana into basic artifacts built beneath the ritual-circle platforms. Those, in turn, generate a spherical barrier over the entire Commerce Guild complex, repelling negative energy and filling the space inside with neutral mana. That's it."

"Simple," Romri snorted indignantly. "Don't believe Boss, Talli. There's nothing simple about it. I've been making amulets and charms for sale for years, and I still couldn't make sense of whatever our Chief Sorcerer cooked up there."

"That's because you neglected rituals, my little aurodium girl," I said with a cheerful wink at the Togruta, who pulled a displeased face. "I told you a dozen times that was a mistake. All magic began with rituals. They are a divine gift bestowed by the First Mentor herself—the point where it all started."

"Might as well be speaking Ancient Huttese," Mlada muttered.

"Can't understand a thing, though," Koit agreed.

"Will you teach me?" the witch asked, fidgeting as she put on an utterly pitiful expression and fixed me with an adoring stare. Oh, she was laying it on thick. Really laying it on. Still, pleasant enough. I was extremely fond of her hunger for knowledge. Sometimes the witch reminded me of a dog in a butcher's shop: she wanted to devour everything in sight and was deeply distressed by the fact that both her stomach and her mouth had limited capacity.

"I will," I agreed, winking at the girl as she smiled in satisfaction. "Once you've mastered the basics, we'll move on to the simplest rituals."

"A moment of silence for our little witch's brain." Romri raised her mug of caf with a mournful expression. "I tapped out while calculating the 'most basic' dependency patterns for the positions of celestial bodies."

"You're just not interested," I said, shaking my head. "You learned how to crank out amulets and charms, the credits started rolling in, and now you don't care about anything except those and piloting."

"Not anything. Far from it," Mlada giggled mysteriously, earning a raised fist from Romri. "All right, all right, I'm shutting up…"

"Did I miss something?" I asked, looking from the Togruta to the Mandalorian in surprise.

"Don't mind her, Boss." Romri waved a hand dismissively. The usual reddish-orange tone of her face had deepened slightly. "She's just talking nonsense…"

For some reason, Talli let out a long sigh, looking at the Togruta with something almost like sympathy.

---

"Tum-tum-tum, tum-tudum-tum-tudum…" Lately, humming the solemn, ominous tune I'd so often heard from Ir'rina had become something of a habit.

And now, as I stood there wondering whether to activate the spell and unlock the secret door or leave the tomb first, I couldn't help myself.

"Nah. Who knows what might crawl out of there?" I made up my mind and trudged toward the exit, ignoring the ancient gifted one's insistent, indignant muttering. Like I was going to let some dark ghost that looked like a solidified humanoid fart tell me what to do.

"Do you even know…" The undead seemed to have started in on the same rant for the twentieth time already.

"Do you even know who you're dealing with, huh?" I cut the ridiculous thing off. "Seriously! All I ever hear from you are the same tired threats and boring promises. Maybe your creator really was a powerful gifted, but she clearly half-assed it when she made you!"

"I am my own creator!!!" the ghost shrieked.

I just spat to the side in irritation.

Noisy undead, but an unusual one. It could use the Force, too. Not on the same level as a living gifted, but it might have been enough to deal with some Padawan. Mostly, though, this flying bedsheet kept trying to scare the hell out of me with psychic pressure and Jedi mind tricks. Intelligent undead were traditionally good at laying on the horror, while suggestion was, so to speak, a "native" ability of the gifted in this universe. But I'd eaten more than one ghoul in my time, and I was hardly a novice either in necromancy or in defending myself against mind-probers—people I wouldn't say I hated, exactly, but whose company I certainly never enjoyed.

"Oh, don't bullshit me." I waved a hand dismissively while catching the chunk of stone flying at my head with an aura tendril. "You're just an ordinary projection of a Life Shadow. There isn't a soul in you at all. You fly around, howl, frighten people, tempt them. I'd bet good money that somewhere deep inside your cozy little 'home' there's something like a phylactery containing a crude imprint of the personality that projects you outward. Primitive, but effective."

"I'll kill youuuuu!!!" the monstrosity howled, but I was already ignoring it.

An exceptionally persistent creature. I couldn't even discorporate it properly. Or rather, I couldn't make it stay discorporated. After being dispersed, this fart of a dark cloud—sometimes looking more like a torn rag—needed only a couple dozen seconds to come back.

Much easier to just ignore it.

At first, I tried to be polite, strike up a conversation, introduce myself like civilized sentients. But apparently this projection really had been slapped together with zero effort. First, as I said, it simply tried to crush me with Dark Side pressure, fear, and suggestion. Then it started hurling objects with telekinesis, zapped me once with something like lightning, and when none of that had any effect, it moved on to swearing at me, telling me to fuck off, and spouting nonsense about how I was supposedly "unsuitable."

How am I unsuitable? I'm the perfect candidate to be entrusted with every last secret!

The ghost let out yet another furious, offended hiss when I chuckled in anticipation. This tomb, like several others, radiated more than just Korriban's general Darkness; it had its own distinct "personal" emanations.

And what did that mean?

It meant there was something here.

At the very least, the undead interested me. I knew how to create similar guardian phantoms myself, but I was just as curious about the principles behind creating this sort of sentry within a Force-based tradition.

I hoped these weren't those legendary ghosts of the Ancient Sith. Otherwise, I was going to be seriously disappointed.

Although… I'd already gotten plenty of pleasant things out of visiting this planet. Good relations with the local boss, for one, and regular shipments of filled reservoirs to Jabiim. Even with the conversion cycles, Korriban's background was simply too saturated with Darkness and Death; the quartz would wear out quickly. So instead of supplying ordinary consumables, I'd decided to make the storage crystals themselves the consumables.

Once a year, the locals would simply replace the crystals with fresh ones. I'd already unloaded the first two batches from the Rung's cargo hold, and twenty spent crystals—one from each ritual circle—would be shipped back to the JMG. We'd give them the next batch of new ones free of charge, then drain the negative energy from the used crystals into a proper high-quality reservoir.

There was no such thing as too much Darkness and Death, at least not on Jabiim. We had no necropolises, no cursed places, and I considered that a blessing. Ordinary cemeteries wouldn't produce this kind of "output" even in a hundred years.

So, basically, I'd arranged to export the Dark Side of the Force from Korriban.

Heh.

If only I could find something genuinely tasty in the tombs. A Sith holocron, for example… yeah…

Probably not in this particular burial site, though. The swearing phantom hovering nearby hardly lived up to the reputation of the "terrifying and nightmarish" ghosts of the Ancient Sith.

"On the other hand…" I actually stopped for a second just before leaving the tomb. "Maybe this sort of thing simply isn't scary to me, but would be plenty dangerous to the Jedi! After all, I'm carrying protections that not every fortress back on the Turtle could afford…"

"Listen, Xo-Kusan," I said, turning toward the "dirty rag" hanging in the air nearby, which had gone quiet when I started speaking. "What level of gifted could you actually pose a serious threat to, roughly speaking? If we measure it in Jedi terms. Padawan? Knight? Master?"

The Shadow froze. In every sense of the word. In midair, and otherwise. Just hung there in silence.

No matter. I'm a patient man. I could wait for the dead "brains" of a Life Shadow to catch up.

For about five seconds, we stared at each other. Then it started screaming at me again.

Hmm… maybe there really was a soul in there after all? Inside that same phylactery, perhaps? Because a mere projection shouldn't be capable of flying into a rage like this.

The screaming was so furious that I couldn't even make out individual words—the infernal overtones in the ghost's voice didn't help either. On top of that, I had the distinct impression that, given another moment, the phantom would start spraying ectoplasm like spittle from sheer fury.

"What a temper…" I shook my head disapprovingly, raising a force dome to protect myself from a hail of rocks. "Oh! Now that's something new…"

A Force construct of some incomprehensible design tried to close over me, but got stuck against the shield dome.

To my surprise… the damn thing started eating through the shield!

And quite vigorously, too.

Well, well…

I added a couple of conversion blocks to the weave, which had already begun losing stability, and changed the mana in the dome from neutral to light.

"Well, that's no fun at all," I said, almost offended, when the apparently vampiric structure burned away and the ghost, howling as if in pain, darted off into the depths of the tomb. Probably swallowed a mouthful of light mana and gave itself indigestion.

Still, the structure of that peculiar spell had been several times more complex than the Force Pushes demonstrated to me by our chimerologist trainees, Rig Nema and Stass Allie. I'd even say it looked more like magic than Jedi techniques. The only problem was, I hadn't understood the underlying principle at all.

"Could that be… actual Sith sorcery? Or alchemy? Well, the spell itself is nothing special, of course, but I'd really like to understand the principle behind it. Better not destroy this undead thing after all. I should swipe it instead… might come in handy."

---

Original Russian story

You can find more chapters on my Patreon.

The translation of new chapters will also be published here—but with a bit of a delay.

 

[readsalot]

I should swipe it instead… might come in handy."

Click to shrink...

Sith Force Ghost gets kidnapped XD
Hmm reminds me of a 40k/Star Wars crossover a chaos space marine Sorcerer escaped to Star Wars, then proceeds to trap Sith ghosts into their bones to get them to teach him their secrets.
I can see Siith doing the same XD
I can't wait to see the Jedis reaction to him dealing in "Evil Sith Teachings" and getting dark side infused rocks

 

[Vyraco]

Who needs treasure?! A real academic takes the guardian-beasts for vivisection and dismantled traps for later analysis! If you can get a ghost to extract knowledge from that's even better!

 

[FTR2017]

I have the nagging suspicion that Siith would get along splendidly with The Chaotic Good Barbarian going by how he reacted to the 'sheet-tier' ghost haunting that particular tomb.

Will he turn said ghost into a book from which he can read what it knows at his leisure? Perhaps bind it to a roomba with a speaker?