Magic, Myth, and Occasional Mayhem
“What does that button do?”
“That’s the throttle.”
“And that one?”
“The landing gear.”
“And THAT one?”
The old Mandalorian sighed and rolled his eyes. “That’s the ejector switch, for the seat you’re sitting in right now.”
The little boy’s blue eyes went wide. “Whoa…”
Continue reading “The Dream”This one takes a darker turn after the events in “The Mettle of a Mandalorian”. It might be a tough read, but it seemed important to me, both to show the developing bond between these two, as well as the nature of trauma. It carries references to “The Crucible of Korriban” and “The Mirages of Tatooine”.
Author’s Note
Kellaro’s face was gray, but his leg was grayer. Brant banged into his ward in the infirmary, expecting mayhem or murder after his brother’s frightened holocall in the middle of the night, but it was just Kellaro lying there, propped up in his pillows, and rubbing, rubbing, rubbing at his leg like it was one of the djinn lanterns from the stories.
Brant groaned, rubbed his eyes as he relaxed back against the door. “Whatever’s going on, it’s way too early for this,” he muttered. He squinted at Kellaro between his fingers. “So what’s the matter, exactly? Bad dream? Too much spice?”
“My leg,” said Kellaro tensely. Continue reading “Last Night”
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”
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”
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”
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”
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”
Turns out waking a Sith from carbon-freezing can be hazardous to one’s health…
Vette is based on the character of the same name from Star Wars: the Old Republic. In my headcanon, it was Keel’ath who went on to become the Outlander and then Commander of the Eternal Alliance, with Kellaro and Darth Merce/Brant serving under him. So though I kept some details from the SWTOR storylines like the carbonite freezing and Vette’s presence, don’t confuse this with how Chapters played out in-game. (No spoilers made or intended.)
Author’s Note
He felt tingling on the tips of his fingers first. Then all of him was tingling, then hurting, as every nerve stabbed at him as if they had gone a long time without blood. He croaked a scream, trying to move his numb and swollen legs. Something shifted around his feet and his stomach flipped, and then he was falling.
He hit the floor a few seconds later, hard, though he only felt it as a distant impact, separated from his sense of self. Instantly his Force senses snapped out, even as his body remained dull and sluggish. Fragmented memories chased themselves in his mind, speaking of ambushes and a losing battle on his starship. His emotions sang out with a fury through the clouded dark.
I will not submit!
His Force sense seized upon a lifeform at his side, and he instantly moved to attack it. So his arms wouldn’t respond but to stab at him — no matter! He reached out with the Force instead, catching the creature’s throat and throttling it, gleeful as his attacker’s life drained away.
That was for humiliating me.
He was about to reach for another, when the stun bolt from a blaster hit him, rippling across his limbs oddly, as he still couldn’t clearly register any sensation but nerve-pain. He instead felt his movements deaden more, and his mind with them, and for the longest time he could only seethe in impotent hatred.
I will not submit!
“I have a surprise for you, Vette.”
“Oh? Go on.” Continue reading “The Prisoner”
As you can maybe tell by the characters, this story grew out of a Star Wars: the Old Republic fan fiction. In the game, I light-heartedly play a (much) older version of Keelath, where his undeath has caused him to outlive everyone else, and Azeroth (or Talmenor) has entered the Space Age. (Not shown in this story is how he managed to get a kid; as I said, it’s a light-hearted adaption because Keelath just works so well as a Mandalorian!)
I like this story enough I will probably turn it into a Talmenor tale at some point, but I’m a bit torn on whether to leave it as science fiction (so a future Talmenor) or to try and adjust it to be fantasy again. The Sith Empire translates well to the Krygon Empire, and most forms of technology can be retooled to be advanced magic or Little Folk inventions, but the “flavor” of the thing doesn’t always carry over.
So, for now, for those of you who have found this backwater of the site, enjoy this take on the Outlander, Mako, and Akaavi. Continue reading “Tale Out of Time”