Sarak,
If you are reading this, then something has happened to me, preventing me from continuing my duties and contacting you in any other way. Perhaps that something is death. In our line of work, it stalks us in every hour, and the only thing we can hope for is that it is meaningful when it does finally spring at us. I’ve never been one to want to cling on to life anyway, like those sad spirits you see in the tombs. What a miserable existence. Better to be dead.
Sith do not do wills. Every Sith has to be made for and by himself, and death is the final failure, a last sputtering of protest before someone stronger puts him out of his misery. For this, I leave you with nothing.
Nothing material, anyway. You see, Mandalorians don’t see it this way. Every warrior who fell went to his death with a song in his heart: the song of his clan and creed. He lives on through his aliit.
I don’t have an aliit, so I guess that will have to be you.
When I Ascended to Lordship, I was forced to kill my own father. It was my master’s way of severing me fully from the Mandalorian ways, but for a trick of my father, it didn’t work out that way. When my master commanded me to strike him down, I couldn’t do it. I’ve cut off my own arm, leapt before a blow meant for the Wrath, slaughtered thousands — innocent and otherwise — for my Emperor. But that day, I couldn’t move.
My father instead sacrificed himself for me. He led me to fight him. He died a warrior’s death, and in doing so, he passed the song of the clan to me.
As I am writing this, likely dead, certainly gone, I now pass it to you.
Good men are not pacifists, Ufsa’ra’kemu. If they were, they would merely sit and wait until the darkness came over them. Good men are monsters on the inside: monsters who have learned to control their monstrosity.
Power without purpose is meaningless. For when you give yourself to a greater purpose, you are freer than any man has a right to be. You become guided by something far stronger than you are, and through that power comes freedom.
My own purpose… was you. My aliit, my Mand’alor: my Honor Guard, my Emperor. To die so that each of you could live. When I took you into the medbay — that time you had lost your hand to Veynor — it was the first time I held you as brother. In that moment, you broke my chains.
Passion leads to pain, ner ori’vod, and pain will transform us, but whether it will be for good or for bad, only you can decide.
Ni su’cuyi (I’m still alive), gar kyr’adyc (but you are dead), ni partayli (I remember you), gar darasum (so you are eternal). This is the way.
May your chains be broken.
-Brant Lok’kar