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The Mettle of the Mandalorian

Some of this echoes “Battle Over Odessen” for how Keel’ath handles the news his sons have gone MIA. It takes place sometime after “The Middleman”, but Vette is chilly towards Brant once again, due to a fight that took place offscreen that I have yet to write.
I made the decision to use the crew’s last names here, a difficult choice in any kind of fiction where both names are given. Kellaro is the one exception because he doesn’t have a last name, as Mako doesn’t have one, and Keel’ath left his behind long before the twins were born.
Author’s Note

“Wait, where’s Kellaro?”

Jorgan just eyed Brant and said nothing as he carried Dorne past, one arm of hers slung around his broad Cathar shoulders. Brant stood by — was forced to, as M1-4X rumbled past, also carrying a trooper in its arms. Once the droid was out of the way, Brant tailed the Cathar, snapping:

“Answer me, cat! Where is the major?”

“He fell,” the Cathar finally said, but only after he had gently laid Dorne onto one of the beds in the medical bay. Continue reading “The Mettle of the Mandalorian”

Pages: 123456789

Sketches of Lightsabers

Two shorts regarding the mismatched lightsabers of Brant and Lathril. The first short takes place shortly after “The Mirages of Tatooine”, while the latter occurs sometime after “A Jedi’s Failing”.
Author’s Note

The lightsaber sang as he cut through the air with it. It had been the property of a Jedi’s, and like most such lightsabers, he picked it up expecting it to scream in agony, until it either cracked or submitted to his will, like his red lightsaber had done those years ago on Dromund Kaas. He was putting the weapon through its paces now, testing its fortitude now that it had been through one battle in his hands already. Merce wasn’t sure what to think of the results so far; the blade remained stubbornly blue.

Some lightsabers like this remained defiant for years, Merce knew, their cries of a harsh pitch, ping-ponging around in his head like a childhood ditty he couldn’t forget. Like all things conquered by the Sith, though, eventually they would crack and bleed, red staining the blade and attuning the kyber crystal inside them forever to the Dark Side.

This lightsaber, though, truly sang with joy in his hands. It loved to move, cutting arcs and dodging in and out of his legs and arms like a dancer, moving with a grace all its own that he didn’t have to force. When Merce ignited both ends, he could almost make an entire world for himself, spinning the double-bladed weapon in figures about his head or to either side in a classic defensive stance; it created a curtain of song, that he could use to cut out the harshness of the world around him.

Though he had been expecting a battle of wills, it had become almost meditative as he spun through his exercises. He could sense their energies merging, like any properly broken-in lightsaber should do with its wielder, but unlike his old lightsaber, this was not a subjugating of the kyber, but almost a freeing. It was like the music he had once heard on Vette’s little hijacked holocom: full of Sith-like passion, but also something greater and grander, like the dance of planets around a star or the stars around the center of the galaxy. He had no name for it, but he recognized it even so, like an old grandmother he had only met once as a child, and he could sense the lightsaber waving back at him, coy and smug in his recollection.

He could not hide his pleasure from Vette as he finally shut off the lightsaber and joined her by the fire, but at least she seemed to know better than to ask questions about it. Their relationship had improved markedly since their crossing of the Dune Sea and his recovery from the terrible Tusken poison. Merce didn’t want to think about why, because in thinking about why, he also remembered how, and that spiked him with fear and shame that he had been so disarmed up front of her.

No, he preferred the dance of the lightsaber, because even while it pulled him into dangerous mental territory, where no Sith was ever meant to go, it was also unquestionably deadly.

Pages: 12

The Mirages of Tatooine

Master Yonlach is an NPC in SWTOR, part of the Sith Warrior storyline. Like many elements of SWTOR, I’ve re-interpreted his role in Darth Merce’s story, and there’s nothing in this post that contains spoilers for the canon plotline, unless you count the small reveal regarding Jaesa.
I picked this title to echo “The Crucible of Korriban” and “The Darkness of Dromund Kaas”, for while this is not Sith training, it does reflect Brant’s continuing journey in his usage of the Force. The beginning is a bit slow and exposition-y as it’s been sitting that way in my notes for months; it picks up a little more towards the middle, I promise.
Author’s Note

The Tusken Raider rose up out of the sand directly at their feet, too quickly for Merce to shout a warning. Only his Force-sense prevented the creature from breaking his knees, as his red lightsaber shot out in reaction and cut its staff in two before it could complete the swing. Even so, the claws on the staff’s tip slashed across Merce’s chest, drawing blood and almost pulling him over when they caught on the fabric of his robe. Continue reading “The Mirages of Tatooine”

Pages: 12

The Middleman

The brothers were quarreling again. Vette grimaced and quickly jogged into the medical bay of Havoc Squad’s starship. She didn’t know what she was going to do in there — both Kellaro and Brant could outmatch her when it came to fighting — but she didn’t feel right just letting it continue, either.

The corpse of the human Brant had slain was still lain out on one of the medical bay’s tables, halfway through an autopsy. Lieutenant Dorne was standing nearby, holding a scalpel in one hand as if she was contemplating who she would rather shove it into: the Major or the Sith. Vette came up beside her, gently touching her where her stained surgeon’s apron didn’t cover, nodding in query toward the twins.

Kellaro answered her inadvertently before Dorne could. “We had everything under control, until you arrived. You not only directly disobeyed my orders, you…” The human blew out his nostrils, but he couldn’t resist the rage, snapping his teeth into a grimace as his eyes flashed. “You killed our contact!”

“He needed to die,” said Brant stubbornly.

“I am the one who chooses that! I am the commanding officer, not you.”

“You certainly excel at making your will known at the top of your lungs,” Brant snarled back. Continue reading “The Middleman”

Joining the Alliance

Finally, an explanation as to how Keelath did manage to father those kids. It worked surprisingly well given Mako’s canon backstory from SWTOR.
Author’s Note

They carefully avoided each others’ eyes as they boarded the transport down to the planet’s surface. Kellaro sat next to Vette (or, perhaps it would be better said, that Vette sat next to Kellaro), with the rest of his crew ranged out to the other side of him. Brant felt his brother’s piercing eyes land on him for all of one moment, then Kellaro was turning to casually chat with a Cathar beside him. Vette simply didn’t look at him at all.

And he didn’t look at them. He sat on the end, closest to the door, pulling in his feet anytime another passenger passed. Lana came in, took in the tense atmosphere, touched his knee, then settled a seat away.

The restraints came down, the lights went dim, and the pilots of the transport chattered to each other over the open radio comms. Kellaro shifted, nervous as any leader responsible for so many men but without actual control in the situation, then there was a lurch, and they were leaving the docking bay into space. Continue reading “Joining the Alliance”

The Darkness of Dromund Kaas

Part two of Brant(Darth Merce)’s training. Thanks to Alelsa for helping me brainstorm some of Vette’s insults!
Part one is told in “The Crucible of Korriban”, found here.
Author’s Note

As his master had promised, Merce was granted new freedoms for passing his first trial. He now kept his own apartment on Dromund Kaas, came and went from it as he pleased. He ate when he wanted, though the food all seemed to taste the same. He could wander at will around the cool stone interiors of the Sith temples and around the dark forests outside Kaas City — though there wasn’t much reason to. He could play at sabacc in the cantinas, race speeders through the city streets, and get intoxicated on exotic spice in the alleyways. In short, he could go almost anywhere he desired, except off-planet, and do anything he wished, so long as he didn’t disobey his Master’s will. Continue reading “The Darkness of Dromund Kaas”

Sketches of Vette

These are a bunch of unconnected shorts to do with Vette and Darth Merce (Brant) getting to know each other.
As always, though I try to recapture the spirit of the original character from SWTOR, these scenes are entirely new and my own creation.
Author’s Note

Brant first met her on his way into the extensive prisons under Kaas City.

He and the other apprentices had captured intruders on the planet’s surface — allies to the Jedi, they believed, though none of the intruders appeared to be Force-sensitive. Their allegiance to the Jedi was what saved them, though only from the attentions of the apprentices: Jedi ilk were to be delivered, unsullied, to the detention block, there to be tortured by more skilled Sith for information. Any others could be left in the jungle to die as they would, and frequently that would be to satisfy the blood-craving of some unhinged apprentice seeking sport between their duties.

Brant, as he did all things that involved the other apprentices, kept himself aloof from dealing with intruders, and so it was partly by chance he found himself in the detention block that day, bringing in a string of them who had sought him out, rather than the other way around. It was as he loitered, waiting boredly for the warden to update the prison log with his catches, that he caught sight of… her.

She was a Twi’lek: a common race among slaves, but this one had an uncommon attitude. She would strike up conversations with the guards, and rather than their threats silencing her, they made her more enthusiastic. She seemed to make it a game, to take their insults and turn them in on themselves, and some of her clever puns even had Brant smirking. There was something different about her teasing, something almost pleasing, like a reminder of sunlight and clean air instead of the slow steady drag into the bowels of a dark stone tomb…

In short, it was… fun.

She only, finally, went quiet when Brant’s own Master, Darth Plothar, stepped into the block. Brant straightened to show him respect, internally wincing when the Twi’lek called out to this new Sith and began her teasing on him, too.

Her catcalls turned to screams as Plothar turned to her and lit her body up with lightning. Not even his expression changed as he went through the whole sequence: entering, shocking the slave, inspecting Brant’s catches, then leaving, all without saying a word.

Brant lingered some time after he was given permission to return to his own quarters, pausing near the slave’s cell.

“You really should learn the difference between master and servant,” he told her.

“You’re only a slave when you act like one,” she retorted.

“No, I mean, the Masters can shock you a lot harder.”

She just looked at him with a dawning expression, like she realized he was something different. Brant didn’t honor her with another glance though, and he swept from the detention block.

Pages: 123

Battle Over Odessen

This one I didn’t give a whole lot of thought to before finalizing as a post (I’m not sure what set Brant off in the beginning, for instance), and after a few days, I realized I wrote myself into a corner. Brant still has more to explore with his family relationships before his big reveal with the Emperor, and the betrayal he pulls here puts him too far down the path of no return than I wanted. I’ll still post this story up though, as I do like the timing and the interplay of the different scenes and moods. I can probably adapt a lot of it after spending more time with Brant’s homecoming in other shorts. We’ll see.
SPOILER information: this part of the story revolves around a pivotal moment in the Chapters plot of SWTOR, however, I gave it my own twist and very little is like how it is in the original.
Author’s Note

The flash of the lightsaber came too quickly for Keel’ath to react. It sliced out at him, sliced through him, and he felt oddly lighter as something thudded to the ground.

He looked down and saw his severed arm at his feet. It spat sparks instead of blood, and the fingers were twitching slightly as the electrical equipment went haywire from too much energy coursing along its circuits. His stump wasn’t hurting at least, Keel’ath thought with odd detachment. He supposed the wires had been cut so swiftly they hadn’t been able to send any pain signals to his core.

He then looked up at Brant. Where the man’s face had first been purple with rage, now it was near white, pale under his natural melanin. The lightsaber retracted with a zip, and then the Sith was fleeing, using a burst of Force speed to get around the angry generals clustering in his path, knocking one small woman to the floor.

Keel’ath said nothing as the Alliance compound alerted to the attack. He said nothing to the officers turning his way, asking if he was okay; he even ignored one leaning to get a better speculative eye on his mechanical arm. Somebody quickly got up on the screen a map of the compound, with a little lighted blip tracking Brant’s progress as he fled. Keel’ath noted he seemed to be avoiding any more fights, and only then did he break his silence and stillness to press the intercom button. Continue reading “Battle Over Odessen”

The Prisoner, Part Two

I wrote up and published the first part of “The Prisoner” before I realized the scene had more to do here in Part Two. Here’s the link to the first part: https://www.foxfirefiction.com/2022/11/19/the-prisoner/
This also contains references to Brant’s training as a Sith, found here.
Other notes… More cameos of canon characters from SWTOR here, with two that become part of my plot in a big way. It was especially fun to inject Tanno Vik of Havoc Squad here. As if Kellaro needed any more headaches…
Though the spoilers are fairly general ones, this does contain spoilers for the Chapters storyline and the Ziost storyline for SWTOR, regarding the Emperor’s role and identity.
Author’s Note

Vette was as good as her word, keeping pace beside Brant as he stumbled through the tight corridors of the Republic ship and down its gangplank to the docking bay’s floor. The air devolved into cacophony, and as he knew no one but Vette and Kellaro, he couldn’t make heads or tails of the mass of humanity blooming in his Force-heightened senses. With a firm hand on his waist, her arm cleverly tucked in his like he was escorting her, Vette guided him into one spot and had him stand there.

He wasn’t entirely blind at least, he found as he stood there waiting for only the Emperor knew what. The glaring lights of the hangar was like seeing a sun from deep underwater: nothing was illuminated and the light wavered constantly, but at least he could orient to what was up, down, dark, and light.

The other voices in the bay suddenly quieted, and he could pick out a set of footsteps slowing advancing towards him from the left, stopping what sounded like every few feet to have a conversation. Kellaro had said something about an inspection muster. Was Brant to be inspected as well? And where was Kellaro? Brant felt an unreasonable anger rising at being so abandoned.

Soon the footsteps stopped right before him, and a voice he didn’t recognize said, “What’s this then? New recruit? What’s with the quasi-Jedi getup?”

“I will show you quasi-Jedi,” Brant started to growl, when a new voice, one he surely did recognize, interrupted him. Continue reading “The Prisoner, Part Two”

Pages: 1234

The Crucible of Korriban

This short is about the level of PG-13 for descriptions of violence and gore. It describes Brant’s Sith training, and if you know anything about the Sith, well, now you understand why it has a content warning!
The identity of the Presence and the man in the ice-world is a bit unclear. Though this works since it’s also unclear from Brant’s point of view, I wanted to clarify it for the record: the Presence is not the Force (though the Sith Masters surely would want Brant to think that), but instead the Emperor’s soul. The man, though I originally considered making him Kellaro, Brant’s twin brother (hence “the Other”), is in fact Keel’ath, locked in battle with the Emperor as described by the Chapters storyline in SWTOR. In this version, Brant and Keel’ath meeting is what helps Keel’ath throw off the Emperor’s influence, but also what gives Brant the willpower to survive his Sith training mostly (somewhat) uncorrupted.

Also, the scent of carbonite is totally my own invention. If anyone knows how it really should smell in canon, let me know.
Author’s Note

“Hatred… is… power. Power is… freedom… to do as you so desire.”

It was coercive, how they forced him to focus on that voice. The room was kept completely dark, and Brant could smell the musk of other frightened apprentices crammed into the space with him, even though he could not see them. The voice was like a balm to that terrified huddle, the one clear sensation in the room even though it, too, was imbued with the same power as the darkness: the crawling sense of some ancient evil. The only thing Brant could see was the face that vomited it, that voice, and it was a handsome face, even under the ritualistic scarring and red paint like the blood of a tortured slave. You could look into that face and believe it could free you, that only it had the key, and that it would give it to you, if only you acquiesced to its commands. It filled Brant with fear, loathing, but also longing, to look upon it. Continue reading “The Crucible of Korriban”