Okemi was a male Sith Lord during the days of the first Sith Empire. A Red Sith, the original Sith species, he was a Massassi warrior who rose up against the rule of the Jedi halfbreeds and their Council led by Dark Lord Marka Ragnos a century before the Great Hyperspace War. His rebellion was defeated, and he was exiled to Antei where he made himself a king. Using dark rituals, he prolonged his life, coming to be hailed as a god.
After the Great Sith War, Okemi formed the Star Chamber with Taimat and Ferran. For years the Triumvirate presided over the embryo of a new Sith Empire. But the long centuries of Okemi’s profane life had nurtured something far worse, and the Star Chamber was destroyed by his folly.
Four millennia passed since that night before the Brotherhood arrived on Antei. The arrival of the Dark Lord of the Sith stirred Okemi’s husk, and the consciousness he had birthed spread across the Brotherhood like a plague. He was finally laid to rest when Lord Firefox destroyed his essence with Ferran’s legendary sword, Son’Jiatt.
Biography
Early life and uprising
Okemi was one of the few pureblooded Sith to rise to the Sith Council, being fortunate enough to be born Force-sensitive. A warlord, he did not see eye to eye with his fellow Sith Lords, and resented how the native Massassi were forced to work as slaves for the Jedi halfbreeds who had interbred with members of the Sith species centuries ago. The Golden Age of the Sith Empire it may have been, but he did not see that to be true, believing it to have become the halfbreed's Empire rather than his.
A century before the Great Hyperspace War, Okemi challenged Marka Ragnos early in the halfbreed’s reign as Dark Lord. Okemi’s uprising brought together many of the slave races who had been drawn into the Sith Empire, uniting Massassi and Kissai, together with the Ekind and various others. The civil war which followed was brutal, but even together the slaves could not stand against the power of the Dark Jedi Lords of the Sith, and Okemi’s armies were crushed by Ragnos and his sorcerers. Defeated, Okemi was stripped of his power and banished to die on the planet Antei on the outskirts of the Sith Empire.
King of Antei
File:KingOkemi.gifKing Okemi, Lord of the Star ChamberAntei was supposed to have served as a prison for Okemi and his surviving disciples, stranded and without interstellar transport on a world inhabited only by a primitive pre-hyperdrive civilization of Near-Humans. But Ragnos underestimated Okemi’s resolve, and the Sith warlord subjugated the Anteians as the Jedi and the Kissai had subjugated the Massassi in millennia past.
Okemi proclaimed himself King and taught the Anteians about Sith lore and magic. Great temples were constructed in his honor, and entire cities sprung up as he forged an empire of his own, however isolated from the rest of the Galaxy it may have been. Through dark rituals he prolonged his life far beyond its natural span, surviving for centuries, long after his mortal body should have failed.
However, Okemi's long life and all the sacrifices in his name began to nurture something much darker than any mere Sith magics. His heart may still have beat, but his soul was slowly being corrupted, devoured by an entity that had been conceived in the crucible of all the bloodshed and death necessary to sustain him.
The Star Chamber
Legends differ on the exact details, but what is known for sure is shortly after the Great Sith War, the Krath sorceress Taimat discovered Antei. A gifted seer, Taimat had fled known space after the defeat of Exar Kun and Ulic Qel-Droma, and was drawn to Antei through her dreams. When she found the lost world, she encountered a thriving civilization; a mix of Sith, Human, and half-breed alike; all centered on its one true God-King: Okemi.
Antei had been forgotten by the rest of the Galaxy since Okemi’s exile. At first, Taimat was a novelty to the God-King, bringing news of the outside world, the fall of the Sith Empire, the power of the Galactic Republic, the Krath, the new Sith Order. However, in time, Okemi came to realize Taimat was more than a mere messenger, but a powerful sorceress in her own right, and a worthy ally. They forged an alliance, laying the foundations of the Star Chamber; but there was yet one more player to assemble. They reached out, drawing a powerful warrior from the Mecrosa Order named Ferran to Antei to join them. Together, the three became the Triumvirate.
The Triumvirate brought together a vast background of dark magics: Ferran, the teachings passed down by the Mecrosa, from Viscountess Mireya of Vjun, and those of Alaiedon and Son’Jiatt; Taimat, the teachings passed down by the Krath, from the Ketos and Freedon Nadd, and those of the Wanderer and the Marked; and finally Okemi, the teachings passed down by the ancient Sith, from the Jedi Exiles, and Xendor and the Legions of Lettow, and those of the all but forgotten empire of the Rakata.
Downfall
The Triumvirate rose to power quickly, their countless backgrounds forming a union never before seen. But the Golden Age of the Star Chamber was to be short lived. Only when the corruption Okemi had been harboring spread to his followers did he realize the full price he had paid for his endless life. Unlike the God-King himself, the rank and file disciples lost themselves entirely to the nameless, giving birth to a twisted consciousness that drove them to raw chaos and destruction. Like a plague, the madness spread throughout the Star Chamber, tearing the Anteian civilization apart in war.
Taimat approached Okemi and petitioned to perform a ritual to seal the nameless back in the void and purge Antei of the infection. Ferran protested wildly at the witch’s plan, dismissing it as madness; but Taimat was insistent that there was no other way. Reluctant though he was, Okemi gave leave to the sorceress’s plan, seeing no other choice, or else watch his entire empire crumble into nothingness.
Okemi’s decision proved to be his greatest folly. Ferran understood more than the others recognized, and knew the ritual would only destroy everything they had built the past fifty years, but would not rid Antei of the void’s presence. Ferran hurried to the Star Chamber with his apprentices when he sensed the ritual going wrong, and Taimat unable to harness the power of the sun as she had claimed. Okemi himself disappeared; Ferran assuming the ancient Sith to have committed suicide, too ashamed to face the catastrophic consequence of his misjudgement. Inside the main dome of the Star Chamber, Ferran plunged Son’Jiatt into Taimat’s heart, reversing the ritual, and killing them both; but also transforming Ante into the Dark Star, rendering Antei lifeless and barren.
However, Okemi had not committed suicide as Ferran had believed...
The past never sleeps...
Okemi may not have ‘died’, but he ceased to be Okemi that day. What remained of Anteian civilization collapsed and the Star Chamber was forgotten, along with the slumbering remnant of its once God-King. ‘Okemi’ slumbered for nearly four millennia, before the rediscovery of Antei by Trevarus Caerick. The arrival of the Brotherhood–led by Lord Firefox, then Dark Lord of the Sith– stirred Okemi’s remains; but it was not until the system wide genocide of the Antarans led by Councilors Xanos Zorrixor and Shaithis that the lingering essence of the ancient Sith Lord fully reawakened.
The fire of past conflict stirred ‘Okemi’ back to consciousness, and the memory of slavery thousand years past made first contact with the modern day Star Chamber's Oracle, Trevarus Caerick. The dark consciousness issued what amounted to a declaration of intent to war, which Caerick transcribed in the Tenebric Conclusions, but Lords Firefox and Cotelin ignored the portents as harmless echoes from the past.
Work continued on excavation around the site of the Brotherhood’s new Dark Hall until the discovery of a shaft that led hundreds of meters beneath the surface, to ruins much older than those above ground. Convinced they had discovered the original Star Chamber, Caerick halted all excavation and dispatched his newest apprentice, Teras Korlyn, to investigate. There Korlyn made contact with ‘Okemi’. However, as Ferran had predicted, Taimat’s ritual had not silenced the dark consciousness; and Korlyn was infected with the same rage and madness that had once torn the Star Chamber apart.
History repeated itself, driven both by Okemi’s own lust for revenge against the lords of the Sith, and the raw madness spawned in the Force by his past misdeeds. Korlyn made an attempt on Caerick’s life, seeking to silence the Oracle who already knew too much and make him one of them; but the Amulet of Orian wrapped Caerick in a protective cocoon, cutting him off from the rest of the corruption to shield his mind. Korlyn went on to infect Lord Cotelin, Keirdagh Cantor, and Kem-Shu Maeda. They served as the primary hosts, spreading the entity’s dark presence across Antei. With Lord Firefox away on Muunilinst, Cotelin concealed all existence of the plague; closing all hyperspace lanes in and out of the system, and infecting all visitors on Platform Vorago, which stood just outside the Shroud as a gateway, and was maintained by Clan Tarentum.
‘Okemi’ remained hidden in the underground ruins as the ancient war of the Star Chamber repeated itself. The plague spread throughout the Brotherhood; sowing discontent and sparking civil war between the Clans, further spreading itself through the bloodshed. Okemi’s folly threatened to consume the entire Brotherhood, then the Galaxy, then the entire universe, as the consciousness multiplied in the shadows, and prepared itself for galactic conquest—with ‘Okemi’, together with Antei, to serve as its black heart.
Like flit-gnats, from across the Galaxy the infected swarmed to ‘Okemi’ on Antei, leaving their Clans behind to prepare for war. Back at Antei, the plague had swept the Dark Hall and Shadow Academy. Councillors Telaris Cantor, Alanna, Zorrixor, and Shaithis had been forced underground, vanishing among the countless ordinary denizens of Antei, while Cotelin maintained a tight communications blackout. However, the group managed to secure alternative transport off Antei; and Cantor provided Zorrixor with a message to ferry to Firefox at Muunilinst, alerting the Dark Lord to the dire situation on Antei.
The war’s end game arrived with Lord Firefox’s return to Antei. On the steps of the Dark Hall, Xanos Zorrixor was nearly killed in battle with Kem-Shu Maeda; but the Dark Lord’s arrival caused the madness infecting Maeda to take flight. Cotelin—who had become the consciousness’s ‘sword’—did battle with Firefox, ultimately being bested and forced to retreat. With Cotelin defeated, the path to the ruins of the Star Chamber was opened. There, Alanna and Caerick—now freed of the Amulet of Orian’s cocoon—came across Ferran’s tomb, and an inscription that spoke of the coming of the ‘Iron King’. Inside, Firefox discovered Ferran’s blade, the Sword of Thunder’s Fury, Son’Jiatt.
There, deep within the crust of Antei, far below the seat of the new Dark Hall, Firefox at last discovered what was left of ‘Okemi’; consumed by the hunger for oblivion, blinded by power, a thousand thousand voices, a thousand thousand memories; the summation of all the predations of the ancient empires, all the blood shed, and lives lost; a madness from beyond time. With one thrust of Son’Jiatt, the first lord of the Star Chamber crumbled to dust, his long years finally at an end.
The profane consciousness died with Okemi. Except for one lone spark, kept ‘safe’ within the Amulet of Orian’s protective cocoon; an echo of Okemi’s twisted ramifications that would live forever in the entity known as Shan Long.
Trivia