CHARACTER: Sith Inquisitor (Darth Imperius). Customizable first name: Archeval CANON:Star Wars: The Old Republic (Bioware MMORPG) CANON POINT: Immediately after the end of Shadow of Revan, before the events of Ziost
BACKGROUND:
The power of the dark side grows. The SITH EMPIRE has won a major victory against the Galactic Republic and its Jedi guardians, conquering and enslaving many new worlds.
With a fragile peace in place, the Empire sends its slaves to the ancient Sith stronghold of KORRIBAN, hoping to unearth relics of vast power that can be used to dominate the galaxy.
One slave, powerful with the Force, has been released from servitude and forced to master the dark arts of the Sith or die trying....
3000 years before the events of the Star Wars movies, the Galactic Republic and Sith Empire are in an era of uneasy cold war. With its numbers of powerful Sith Force-users depleted from previous years of fighting, the Empire is desperate for recruits. Becoming Sith is essentially becoming nobility in the Empire, but with Force-sensitives thin on the ground, Imperial authorities are forced to trawl for new Sith potentials anywhere they can find them -- including in places that would have been unthinkable before, such as out of the ranks of the Empire's expansive slave underclass. One such recruit is Archeval, who will go on to rise from obscurity to the high rank of Darth.
chapter 1: legacies of old
Not much is canonically known about Arche's pre-Sith life, save that he was born into slavery and experienced a great deal of hardship, leading him to have little love for the Empire that oppressed him. His story truly begins when he's plucked from the slave pens and sent to the Sith Academy on the desolate planet of Korriban; there he endures brutal and deadly training that often pits him against the dangers of ancient Sith tombs or even his fellow trainees, with acolytes encouraged to turn on each other and thus weed out the weak ("On Korriban, we held little parties each time a fellow student died," he can remark at one point in canon). Despite being under the thumb of an instructor prejudiced against "slave scum", Arche's talent draws the eye of a high-ranking Sith, Darth Zash, who ends up taking him under her wing. Along the way making dubious friends with Khem Val, an ancient monster from one of the Sith tombs, Arche becomes Zash's official apprentice; he helps her with her machinations against her rivals in exchange for the promise of power and learning. While on a mission for her into the ruins of an ancient temple, he discovers that although he grew up enslaved, he's actually the descendant of a famous Sith bloodline -- that of one Lord Kallig -- a man who in centuries past was betrayed and killed by another Sith Lord, with his family sold away into the slave trade. The ghost of Kallig himself appears in person to warn the young apprentice to be wary of his master...
Zash is a generous patron to her apprentice, however, providing Archeval with supplies and contacts and even his own starship as she sends him on missions across the galaxy, continually promising to build him up with further power and influence. During one such mission Arche befriends a rowdy space pirate named Andronikos Revel, who joins his crew and becomes the main pilot for Arche's ship. Partly through Zash's manipulations and partly through his own contributions working for the Empire on planets like Balmorra and Nar Shaddaa, Arche begins to build a significant power base of civilians and Sith acolytes who answer to his beck and call, and even mostly-accidentally stumbles into owning his very own cult. But Sith kindness always has a catch, and Zash's is a big one: she's provided her new apprentice with all this only because her current body is aging and withering, and she plans to literally kick out Arche to take his body for her own, thus inheriting it all. Tricked into walking right into the middle of her necromantic ritual, Arche only survives thanks to the quick intervention of Khem Val, the monstrous ancient alien whose loyalty he earned back as a student. Zash accidentally sends herself into Khem's body instead, and unable to fully override his strong will, she remains trapped there for the moment... but not without making periodic efforts to take the monster's body for her own.
chapter 2: sith hierarchy
To the outside world, for all intents and purposes it appears that Zash has been killed by her apprentice, and as is the Sith way this leaves her position open for the taking: Arche ascends to the title of Sith Lord as he inherits his master's old power base and the rest of her old servants. He also finds himself now answering to Zash's old boss -- Darth Thanaton, a prominent lord who quickly rises into the Dark Council, the ultimate ruling authority of the Empire just under the Emperor himself. Thanaton doesn't think much of this young ex-slave upstart, accusing him at every turn of spitting on Sith tradition; perhaps sensing a potential future rival to be disposed of, Thanaton orders Arche out on a mission he's clearly not meant to come back from. Only the intervention of his ghostly ancestor Kallig prevents Archeval from dying at the hands of a different angry ghost in the tomb where Thanaton sends him. Kallig advises his descendant that to protect himself against Thanaton, Arche will need to accumulate a lot more power and do it fast: the method he suggests is to learn the ritual of Forcewalking, a rare technique that allows a Force-user to bind Sith ghosts to themselves and borrow their strength. Archeval manages to learn the technique and challenges Thanaton again with the power of two ghosts behind him, but the Dark Council member still wipes the floor with the young upstart, seemingly killing him; however, the power of the bound ghosts returns Arche to life. It's then he decides that the only way to survive against Thanaton is to become a true Forcewalking master.
Mastering the Forcewalking technique and finding more ghosts to bind in order to protect himself against Thanaton leads the young Sith Lord on a galaxy-spanning quest, during which time he visits a number of planets and befriends more people who become crewmates on his ship, including Imperial archaeologist Talos Drellik and even a Jedi Padawan called Ashara Zavros. Arche and Ashara become particularly close as they share a desire to reform the Empire into a place of less prejudice and oppression, and eventually Ashara comes to consider herself Lord Archeval's apprentice. Arche later takes one other official apprentice from the Korriban Academy as well, an ex-slave like himself named Xalek. Together with Andronikos and Khem Val (and by extension, sort of Zash), this group of minions are the closest thing Arche has to real friends, crewing his personal starship and helping him in his day-to-day affairs. Arche also makes the acquaintance of a fellow up-and-coming young Sith Lord, apprentice to the powerful Darth Baras, and the pair strike up an unlikely friendship as they find that they work well together.
After binding the power of several Force ghosts to himself, Arche decides he's accumulated enough power to remove Darth Thanaton as a threat for good, and goes to confront him on the Imperial homeworld; while the battle goes in Arche's favor at first, he quickly finds himself overwhelmed by the amount of power coursing through his body, the ghosts mocking him as he unleashes a Force storm entirely out of his control. He has to flee the area with the help of his crew members, who note that he's looking terrible -- the excess of power inside him is causing his body to start to deteriorate, and the ghosts, sensing his weakness, have decided to turn their combined efforts toward spitefully driving him mad. Before he can deal with the threat of Thanaton, Arche is forced to seek out a cure for his rapidly declining health.
chapter 3: power and duty
Thanaton, finding out about Arche's difficulties, manages to hide some relevant information in hopes of thwarting his quest, but Arche sneaks into the Darth's personal library to do research and determines that he needs to investigate on the worlds of Belsavis and Voss. On Belsavis, a dangerous journey down into the heart of the ancient prison world reveals a long-lost machine developed by the Rakata, a vicious and warlike people who once conquered most of the galaxy in millennia past. Their creation, called the Mother Machine, was responsible for genetically engineering a great many of the alien species that populate the modern galaxy, whom the Rakata considered to be "slave peoples" right alongside Arche's own human species. In exchange for a DNA sample to continue their many centuries of research, one of the few remaining Rakata allows Arche to use the machine to rebuild himself -- the semi-sentient machine, named Ashaa, reconstructs his entire body into a structure capable of handling the physical strain of all his bound ghosts.
While Archeval's body is now safe, however, his mind is still vulnerable to the ravages of the ghosts, who've discovered great entertainment in mentally tormenting him. After a detour to help some of his Imperial subordinates and further secure his power base through helping construct some powerful superweapons, Arche and his crew head to the planet of Voss, where research suggests the local Mystics might have a ritual that could heal his mind and spirit. The Voss prove to be a standoffish and unwelcoming people who are not interested in helping heal an outsider; however, Arche is directed to a group of heretical "dream-walker" cultists who might be able to help him. Eventually he is able to contact a dream-walking shaman from the Gormak people, rivals to the Voss, who is willing to help him in exchange for offworld passage; through dream-walking Arche confronts the ghosts of his own regrets in a mind-healing ritual that breaks the Force ghosts' power over him for good.
With his well-being now fully protected and having secured new allies in the Imperial military, Lord Archeval has become an even more serious threat, and Darth Thanaton is no longer prepared to ignore this walking affront to Sith tradition. Hoping to remove the upstart thorn in his side once and for all, Thanaton declares a Kaggath against Archeval -- an ancient Sith game of cat-and-mouse using all power and influence at each lord's disposal, which ends only when one Sith Lord has ground down the other into total humiliation. The battlefield Thanaton chooses is the planet of Corellia, one of the Republic's most important homeworlds, currently an active war zone where the Empire has just openly broken the peace treaty to launch an all-out assault and conquer the planet. Arche is called upon to take the proper place of a Sith helping lead the Corellian ground assault even as he scrambles to assemble his chess pieces against Thanaton, the Darth attempting to shut down Archeval's resources and contacts and sending minions to try and kill him at every turn. With the help of his Imperial allies, however, Arche is able to outmaneuver Thanaton. In a last-ditch effort, once again Thanaton appears before Arche in person to challenge him to a duel, but this time Arche is well-prepared: he beats the Darth back with the combined power of his Sith ghosts and his own considerable strength, much more practiced and improved than their last meeting; as the fight turns against him Thanaton escapes to flee the planet entirely.
Darth Thanaton's very last desperate gambit finds him running to the planet Korriban, the stronghold of the Academy where Arche's journey started. The Dark Council are assembled there holding a meeting, and a wounded Thanaton demands that they're obligated by Sith tradition to kill this ex-slave upstart, apprentice to the treacherous snake Zash. Arche, however, is hot on Thanaton's heels. He bursts into the chamber uninvited to finally settle the feud once and for all: surrounded by the cold gazes of the uncaring Darths, whose only concern is that the strong should triumph over the weak, Thanaton finds no allies as Lord Archeval beats down the man who simply wouldn't leave him alone to live his life. In the end Thanaton crawls to the feet of the other Dark Councilors begging for their aid, but in doing this he's broken the rules of the Kaggath, which state that outright asking for help from another Sith Lord is forbidden. The traditional penalty for breaking the rules of Kaggath is instant death, and one of the Darths reaches out with the Force to snap the man's neck right there on the Council floor. Darth Thanaton's threat is over.
Having proven himself powerful enough to duel a Dark Councilor and win, and with Thanaton's seat on the Council now open, Arche is judged a worthy successor and the assembled council offers him the seat then and there. One Councilor protests that a mere Lord is not of rank to join such a prestigious body, and in response senior member Darth Marr names Archeval a new Darth in turn: as Arche's work has continually led to the betterment of the Empire during his short career, Marr dubs him Darth Imperius. Suddenly catapulted into the rank of one of the most powerful people in the Empire, Archeval assumes the position of head of the Sphere of Ancient Knowledge, in charge of documenting Sith history and seeking out ancient sites and artifacts to preserve the powerful secrets they hold. With his loyal crew at his side and now thousands of subordinates standing behind him, few would dare to challenge the new Darth Imperius; for this once-slave the future is looking very bright... or dark, as the case may be.
Sith Inquisitor | Star Wars: The Old Republic (1/2?)
CONTACT: sky#9326 on Discord
CHARACTER: Sith Inquisitor (Darth Imperius). Customizable first name: Archeval
CANON: Star Wars: The Old Republic (Bioware MMORPG)
CANON POINT: Immediately after the end of Shadow of Revan, before the events of Ziost
BACKGROUND:
chapter 1: legacies of old
Not much is canonically known about Arche's pre-Sith life, save that he was born into slavery and experienced a great deal of hardship, leading him to have little love for the Empire that oppressed him. His story truly begins when he's plucked from the slave pens and sent to the Sith Academy on the desolate planet of Korriban; there he endures brutal and deadly training that often pits him against the dangers of ancient Sith tombs or even his fellow trainees, with acolytes encouraged to turn on each other and thus weed out the weak ("On Korriban, we held little parties each time a fellow student died," he can remark at one point in canon). Despite being under the thumb of an instructor prejudiced against "slave scum", Arche's talent draws the eye of a high-ranking Sith, Darth Zash, who ends up taking him under her wing. Along the way making dubious friends with Khem Val, an ancient monster from one of the Sith tombs, Arche becomes Zash's official apprentice; he helps her with her machinations against her rivals in exchange for the promise of power and learning. While on a mission for her into the ruins of an ancient temple, he discovers that although he grew up enslaved, he's actually the descendant of a famous Sith bloodline -- that of one Lord Kallig -- a man who in centuries past was betrayed and killed by another Sith Lord, with his family sold away into the slave trade. The ghost of Kallig himself appears in person to warn the young apprentice to be wary of his master...
Zash is a generous patron to her apprentice, however, providing Archeval with supplies and contacts and even his own starship as she sends him on missions across the galaxy, continually promising to build him up with further power and influence. During one such mission Arche befriends a rowdy space pirate named Andronikos Revel, who joins his crew and becomes the main pilot for Arche's ship. Partly through Zash's manipulations and partly through his own contributions working for the Empire on planets like Balmorra and Nar Shaddaa, Arche begins to build a significant power base of civilians and Sith acolytes who answer to his beck and call, and even mostly-accidentally stumbles into owning his very own cult. But Sith kindness always has a catch, and Zash's is a big one: she's provided her new apprentice with all this only because her current body is aging and withering, and she plans to literally kick out Arche to take his body for her own, thus inheriting it all. Tricked into walking right into the middle of her necromantic ritual, Arche only survives thanks to the quick intervention of Khem Val, the monstrous ancient alien whose loyalty he earned back as a student. Zash accidentally sends herself into Khem's body instead, and unable to fully override his strong will, she remains trapped there for the moment... but not without making periodic efforts to take the monster's body for her own.
chapter 2: sith hierarchy
To the outside world, for all intents and purposes it appears that Zash has been killed by her apprentice, and as is the Sith way this leaves her position open for the taking: Arche ascends to the title of Sith Lord as he inherits his master's old power base and the rest of her old servants. He also finds himself now answering to Zash's old boss -- Darth Thanaton, a prominent lord who quickly rises into the Dark Council, the ultimate ruling authority of the Empire just under the Emperor himself. Thanaton doesn't think much of this young ex-slave upstart, accusing him at every turn of spitting on Sith tradition; perhaps sensing a potential future rival to be disposed of, Thanaton orders Arche out on a mission he's clearly not meant to come back from. Only the intervention of his ghostly ancestor Kallig prevents Archeval from dying at the hands of a different angry ghost in the tomb where Thanaton sends him. Kallig advises his descendant that to protect himself against Thanaton, Arche will need to accumulate a lot more power and do it fast: the method he suggests is to learn the ritual of Forcewalking, a rare technique that allows a Force-user to bind Sith ghosts to themselves and borrow their strength. Archeval manages to learn the technique and challenges Thanaton again with the power of two ghosts behind him, but the Dark Council member still wipes the floor with the young upstart, seemingly killing him; however, the power of the bound ghosts returns Arche to life. It's then he decides that the only way to survive against Thanaton is to become a true Forcewalking master.
Mastering the Forcewalking technique and finding more ghosts to bind in order to protect himself against Thanaton leads the young Sith Lord on a galaxy-spanning quest, during which time he visits a number of planets and befriends more people who become crewmates on his ship, including Imperial archaeologist Talos Drellik and even a Jedi Padawan called Ashara Zavros. Arche and Ashara become particularly close as they share a desire to reform the Empire into a place of less prejudice and oppression, and eventually Ashara comes to consider herself Lord Archeval's apprentice. Arche later takes one other official apprentice from the Korriban Academy as well, an ex-slave like himself named Xalek. Together with Andronikos and Khem Val (and by extension, sort of Zash), this group of minions are the closest thing Arche has to real friends, crewing his personal starship and helping him in his day-to-day affairs. Arche also makes the acquaintance of a fellow up-and-coming young Sith Lord, apprentice to the powerful Darth Baras, and the pair strike up an unlikely friendship as they find that they work well together.
After binding the power of several Force ghosts to himself, Arche decides he's accumulated enough power to remove Darth Thanaton as a threat for good, and goes to confront him on the Imperial homeworld; while the battle goes in Arche's favor at first, he quickly finds himself overwhelmed by the amount of power coursing through his body, the ghosts mocking him as he unleashes a Force storm entirely out of his control. He has to flee the area with the help of his crew members, who note that he's looking terrible -- the excess of power inside him is causing his body to start to deteriorate, and the ghosts, sensing his weakness, have decided to turn their combined efforts toward spitefully driving him mad. Before he can deal with the threat of Thanaton, Arche is forced to seek out a cure for his rapidly declining health.
chapter 3: power and duty
Thanaton, finding out about Arche's difficulties, manages to hide some relevant information in hopes of thwarting his quest, but Arche sneaks into the Darth's personal library to do research and determines that he needs to investigate on the worlds of Belsavis and Voss. On Belsavis, a dangerous journey down into the heart of the ancient prison world reveals a long-lost machine developed by the Rakata, a vicious and warlike people who once conquered most of the galaxy in millennia past. Their creation, called the Mother Machine, was responsible for genetically engineering a great many of the alien species that populate the modern galaxy, whom the Rakata considered to be "slave peoples" right alongside Arche's own human species. In exchange for a DNA sample to continue their many centuries of research, one of the few remaining Rakata allows Arche to use the machine to rebuild himself -- the semi-sentient machine, named Ashaa, reconstructs his entire body into a structure capable of handling the physical strain of all his bound ghosts.
While Archeval's body is now safe, however, his mind is still vulnerable to the ravages of the ghosts, who've discovered great entertainment in mentally tormenting him. After a detour to help some of his Imperial subordinates and further secure his power base through helping construct some powerful superweapons, Arche and his crew head to the planet of Voss, where research suggests the local Mystics might have a ritual that could heal his mind and spirit. The Voss prove to be a standoffish and unwelcoming people who are not interested in helping heal an outsider; however, Arche is directed to a group of heretical "dream-walker" cultists who might be able to help him. Eventually he is able to contact a dream-walking shaman from the Gormak people, rivals to the Voss, who is willing to help him in exchange for offworld passage; through dream-walking Arche confronts the ghosts of his own regrets in a mind-healing ritual that breaks the Force ghosts' power over him for good.
With his well-being now fully protected and having secured new allies in the Imperial military, Lord Archeval has become an even more serious threat, and Darth Thanaton is no longer prepared to ignore this walking affront to Sith tradition. Hoping to remove the upstart thorn in his side once and for all, Thanaton declares a Kaggath against Archeval -- an ancient Sith game of cat-and-mouse using all power and influence at each lord's disposal, which ends only when one Sith Lord has ground down the other into total humiliation. The battlefield Thanaton chooses is the planet of Corellia, one of the Republic's most important homeworlds, currently an active war zone where the Empire has just openly broken the peace treaty to launch an all-out assault and conquer the planet. Arche is called upon to take the proper place of a Sith helping lead the Corellian ground assault even as he scrambles to assemble his chess pieces against Thanaton, the Darth attempting to shut down Archeval's resources and contacts and sending minions to try and kill him at every turn. With the help of his Imperial allies, however, Arche is able to outmaneuver Thanaton. In a last-ditch effort, once again Thanaton appears before Arche in person to challenge him to a duel, but this time Arche is well-prepared: he beats the Darth back with the combined power of his Sith ghosts and his own considerable strength, much more practiced and improved than their last meeting; as the fight turns against him Thanaton escapes to flee the planet entirely.
Darth Thanaton's very last desperate gambit finds him running to the planet Korriban, the stronghold of the Academy where Arche's journey started. The Dark Council are assembled there holding a meeting, and a wounded Thanaton demands that they're obligated by Sith tradition to kill this ex-slave upstart, apprentice to the treacherous snake Zash. Arche, however, is hot on Thanaton's heels. He bursts into the chamber uninvited to finally settle the feud once and for all: surrounded by the cold gazes of the uncaring Darths, whose only concern is that the strong should triumph over the weak, Thanaton finds no allies as Lord Archeval beats down the man who simply wouldn't leave him alone to live his life. In the end Thanaton crawls to the feet of the other Dark Councilors begging for their aid, but in doing this he's broken the rules of the Kaggath, which state that outright asking for help from another Sith Lord is forbidden. The traditional penalty for breaking the rules of Kaggath is instant death, and one of the Darths reaches out with the Force to snap the man's neck right there on the Council floor. Darth Thanaton's threat is over.
Having proven himself powerful enough to duel a Dark Councilor and win, and with Thanaton's seat on the Council now open, Arche is judged a worthy successor and the assembled council offers him the seat then and there. One Councilor protests that a mere Lord is not of rank to join such a prestigious body, and in response senior member Darth Marr names Archeval a new Darth in turn: as Arche's work has continually led to the betterment of the Empire during his short career, Marr dubs him Darth Imperius. Suddenly catapulted into the rank of one of the most powerful people in the Empire, Archeval assumes the position of head of the Sphere of Ancient Knowledge, in charge of documenting Sith history and seeking out ancient sites and artifacts to preserve the powerful secrets they hold. With his loyal crew at his side and now thousands of subordinates standing behind him, few would dare to challenge the new Darth Imperius; for this once-slave the future is looking very bright... or dark, as the case may be.