Korroth/Page Three

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The Clone Wars and the CIS

22 BBY to 19 BBY

The Gossam Commandos remained stationed on Castell only for a short time, just enough for Korroth to complete a cursory training course on Gossam biology and medicine. For the two years following the Battle of Geonosis, the Gossam Commandos mainly followed and guarded Presidente Shu Mai in her travels, and in 21 BBY they took part in the Battle of Cerea and the Battle of Virujansi. Korroth did not find it difficult to reconcile spending his time improving other beings' health to his Renascence Pledge, since it allowed him to learn many interesting things that were not to be found in textbooks or from controlled laboratory research. If he was careful, he was also able to try new and untested treatments and drugs on unsuspecting patients. He was even able to test the effects of Thy's vocalizations on injured or ill Gossams.

In 20 BBY the Gossam Commandos contributed to the conquest of several worlds during Operation Durge's Lance, such as Moorja and Duro. After the Battle of Moorja, Korroth was relocated to the Koorivar Fusiliers, led by General Oro Dassyne. These forces assisted the main droid army on many worlds during the Outer Rim Sieges, until the Battle of Bomis Koori IV towards the end of 20 BBY. Here General Dassyne's Fusiliers were shattered by the Republic, but a small detachment, including Korroth, was able to escape the mayhem and reach the Confederate First Fleet. From here, the remaining Fusiliers were disbanded and Korroth was sent with a battalion of Quarren soldiers to fight on the planet Iskalon.

To his dismay, Korroth soon found out that Iskalon was an ocean world, and that they would be fighting Republic forces underwater. Korroth had already seen seas and oceans, both on Melida/Daan and during his travels with the League of Cavaliers Corsaire. However, possibly because he had grown up on a planet with no surface water, he had developed a deep phobia of any large body of water. During his years as a Cavalier, he had often secluded himself to his cabin when the Ghostly Galleon landed near the oceans or seas of a planet.

Panic soon gripped Korroth when he saw that he had no way of turning away from Iskalon. Once on the planet, he was forced underwater in a cramped amphibious craft while a muted battle raged all about him. Here his fear took control of his actions; he killed the small crew and fled the planet. After wandering in confusion for a few days, he travelled to the first planet that came to his mind, Utapau.

Once there, he was forced to land on Pau City and was arrested by Separatist droids, but they released him when he showed his credentials as a CIS medical officer. He was instead assigned to the medical staff that attended the Separatist Council, which was hiding in Pau City at that time. His initial intention upon deciding to come to Utapau had been to travel to Tarbaur or Sazarel, principally out of curiosity to see what had happened in the 65 years since he left Utapau. But now he was in the service of the Separatists and he could not leave Pau City. Since there wasn't much work to do in that period, he was at least able to question the local Utapauns about news from his home lands. The Pau'ans that he talked to immediately recognized him as a Tarbauri, because of the subtle genetic differentiations between the common Pau'ans and the Tarbauri and Sazareli Pau'ans, like bristly eyebrows and drier, swarthier skin. This alone implied much change had occurred in Tarbaur and Sazarel, because in 85 BBY those regions had not yet made any contact with the rest of the planet. The Pau'ans explained sketchily to Korroth that, by around 50 BBY, Utapau was gradually becoming more involved with the galactic community, so the Utapaun Committee had decided to develop and utilize the planet's resources to encourage interplanetary trade. During this development drive, Utapaun prospectors discovered the isolated Tarbaur sinkholes, finding them impoverished and drained by constant slaver raids and internal disputes. The Utapaun Committee agreed to protect Tarbaur from slavers and help it recover by allowing Buuper Torsckil Abbey Devices to build factories in the Tarbauri sinkholes. The residents of Pau City knew little more than this, and Korroth was not able to learn if Mavane Noren was still alive.

The Battle of Utapau in 19 BBY took Korroth by surprise, and he was forced to join the fighting when he found that the Separatist Council had already left Utapau. At first he fought against the clones, but at a certain point in the battle the Separatist droids began labeling all Pau'ans as hostiles, so he was forced to switch sides. When the battle ended, the clones rounded up all the Pau'ans in the city, including Korroth.

The New Order and Byss

19 BBY to 1 BBY

After the Declaration of the New Order, Korroth and many other Pau'ans were exported as slaves to the Deep Core planet of Byss, where they were put to work on a "recolonization effort". After several months of work on the planet, Korroth began to notice faintly through the Force that the slaves' essence or presence in the Force was being slowly drained away by some powerful entity. It was rumored among the slaves that Emperor Palpatine himself was sucking up all the life energy of the slaves on Byss. With the help of the ludos Thy (which he had managed to smuggle to Byss with him) Korroth slowly learned to stop his own Force essence from being drained away through meditation. Among the thousands of slaves on Byss, he was such a small entity anyway that whoever was draining away the slaves' energies would never detect what Korroth was doing.

This proved to be wrong, when he was noticed by the Constable of Homunculi in around 16 BBY. The Constable took him away from the other slaves and put him to work with the Clone Keepers in the Clone Labs of the Emperor's Citadel. There, Korroth assisted the Clone Keepers in their work on the Emperor's genetic code, which would be used to produce Palpatine's clones. He was never considered a Clone Keeper himself because of the New Order's humanocentrist policies. Also, despite the fact that the Constable of Homunculi found him through his use of the Force, he was later told that he was not strong enough in the Force to even start training as a Dark Side Adept.

Korroth remained in the Emperor's Citadel until 1 BBY, when the machinations of Janus Greejatus's Imperial Department of Redesign forced him to flee Byss. He boarded a civilian transport and, before his absence was discovered by the authorities, he had gone into hiding on Sanbra.

Hunt for a Teacher

1 BBY to 11 ABY

After setting up a hideout near the University of Sanbra, Korroth rested for a while and ruminated on his future plans. He realized that this was the first time in almost thirty years that he was not under the command of a higher authority, like the Trade Federation or the Galactic Empire. Now he could dedicate himself fully to the study of the Force, which he had wanted to do since leaving Blenjeel. Korroth reasoned that he already knew all that he could learn about the Force through meditation and with only Thy's song as a guide. Therefore his next step would be to seek out a Force-using organization that could teach him the rest. He had come to Sanbra in the hope that he could find some of the people he had met while studying at the University of Sanbra in the 70's BBY, but all of those students or professors had moved on or passed away. However, he did find a professor who had once been a student of Profex Rynalla, before the Clone Wars. Profex Rynalla had been a scholar and expert on organizations associated with the Force, like the Jedi and Sith. This student of hers, now Profex Libauld Qooster, still possessed all of her notes, papers and findings, so Korroth approached Profex Qooster and was able to negotiate a deal with him. Korroth found that it had been Profex Qooster's dream to learn to use the Force, but as a young boy he had been too afraid to go to the Jedi Order, and now he was too old to go hunting for other masters of the Force. Therefore, Korroth agreed to teach the professor what little he knew about the Force in exchange for guidance on the Force-using organizations of the galaxy.

The Valley of the Dark Lords on Korriban

Korroth spent the rest of 1 BBY perusing Profex Rynalla's studies on Force-using organizations and planning his future travels to examine these organizations, or what was left of them, in person. During this time, he also taught what little he knew about the Force to Profex Qooster, who was Force-sensitive and a quick learner. In 0 BBY, Korroth started his journey by visiting Korriban and Ziost. The Valley of the Dark Lords and the Sith Citadel impressed upon him what heights of power and magnificence a civilization ruled by Force-users could reach. Korroth also sensed the Dark Side power emanating from the crumbling tombs of Korriban. He spent much time basking in this dark glow, as he could feel that this was the true power by which the will of one could be perpetrated upon the peoples of worlds and empires. He also felt this power on the world of Lehon, where he travelled towards the end of 1 ABY.

For several years Korroth journeyed from planet to planet, following Profex Rynalla's and Profex Qooster's notes. On many worlds, as he expected, he found only the ruins of the Force-using society he was looking for, and these ruins had often already been picked clean by archaeologists and raiders. Some of the organizations that had existed during Profex Rynalla's time had now been destroyed by the New Order's Great Jedi Purge, and if they still existed they had been driven underground, where neither the Empire nor Korroth could find them. On rare occasions he encountered enclaves of Force-users that had somehow resisted the Empire or escaped its notice, like the Baran Do on Dorin or the Nuns of G'aav'aar'oon in the Vodilux Star Cluster. Most of the Force powers and techniques used by these Force-users far surpassed Korroth's current abilities, but he was still able to learn from the way they interacted with the Force, thus forming new hypotheses, scrapping old ones and slowly composing his own vague theory on the nature of the Force. This, however, was not the main objective of his travels. His aim was to find an experienced individual or organization that could teach him the deeper secrets of the Force. None of the Force-users that Korroth encountered seemed to be suitable for this purpose, since many of them were restricted by burdensome moral and ethical laws, much like the Jedi, and those not bound by such laws, most often followers of the Dark Side, were too disorganized and frequently too violent to be able to teach Korroth anything.

The death of Emperor Palpatine in 4 ABY and the subsequent gradual fragmentation of the Galactic Empire allowed Korroth to continue his travels in the open, without the fear of being caught by Imperial authorities. In 10 ABY, however, Korroth learned that Emperor Palpatine had survived in one of his clone bodies and was directing his Empire from Byss. In 11 ABY, hoping to acquire information on the various groups of Dark Side Adepts of the Empire, he travelled to Byss. Most of the Imperial forces were busy in a battle over Onderon, so Korroth was able to infiltrate the Emperor's Citadel and steal several documents from the library. Before he could obtain more records, he was found by Stormtroopers and was forced to flee the planet in a hurry. This saved his life, since he left the [starwars:Beshqek system|Beshqec system]] shortly before the Galaxy Gun's projectile collided with Byss and destroyed its surface.

Hunt for Okemi's Descendants

11 ABY to 24 ABY

The documents that Korroth had stolen on Byss consisted of an investigation on a group of Dark Side Adepts that once served the Galactic Empire but were now allied with one of the fallen Empire's splinter factions. The documents did not state the name or location of the organization and its ally, but it did speculate that the Dark Side Adepts had some sort of connection to an ancient pure-blood Massassi Sith Lord called Okemi. Korroth travelled to Sanbra to consult Profex Rynalla's notes on the Old Sith Empire. Once there, he found that Profex Qooster had died of old age, but he had passed on everything, including his teachings in the Force, to one of his trusted students. This student helped Korroth find a reference to a revolt of Sith slaves led by a Massassi warlord against the Dark Lord Marka Ragnos. With this, he went to Korriban and examined the inscriptions and murals in the tombs of Marka Ragnos and several of the Dark Lord's allies. He spent several years deciphering these and trying to find a mention of Okemi. In 14 ABY he was forced out of Marka Ragnos's tomb by the Disciples of Ragnos. Korroth still had access to the tombs of the Sith Lords that served Marka Ragnos, so that, in 15 ABY he was able to conclude that the Massassi Sith Lord Okemi had fought and lost in a war against the Dark Jedi Sith Lords, after which he was exiled to a planet called Antei.

Korroth set out to find Antei in the hope that the documents he had found on Byss told the truth, and that by following the trail of Okemi he would reach the organization of Dark Side Adepts. He spent six years scouring the galaxy without success for this mysterious planet, but he never gave up, because he could feel through the Force, faintly but surely, that his current path would lead him to fulfill his purpose. During these years he financed his journeys by working for the Republic Bioengineering Corps, a descendant of the Imperial Corps of Bioengineers, traveling aboard a modified SkyBlind recon ship.

In 21 ABY, Korroth was traveling along the Daragon Trail when he began hearing rumors of an undead Sith Lord. The stories seemed to intensify as Korroth travelled nearer to Korriban, but once in Dreshdae the rumors seemed to point to another planet. His enquiries led him to Thule. By this time the rumors about the Sith Lord had died away, but Korroth remained to investigate on the system from which the rumors had originated. Sometime between 22 ABY and 24 ABY, a mysterious hooded local directed Korroth to the Shroud, an impenetrable nebulous cloud that covered a large area of space between Thule and Coratua. Korroth was preparing to leave the spaceport of Kessia when an unseen attacker bludgeoned him from behind and he lost consciousness.

Dark Jedi Brotherhood

Shadow Academy

24 ABY

He awoke on a dark desert plain with mountains in the far distance, and he found a disparate group of humanoids in his same condition. From them he came to know that they had been captured by the Dark Jedi Brotherhood, and they were to reach the Shadow Academy on the distant mountain range to pass a test of resilience. Korroth set off immediately and separated himself from the group, since he suspected they would only hinder him. He reached the mountain range five days later, but he spent three further days trying to scale its slopes to reach the Shadow Academy. On the last day he came across the survivors of the group he had met previously, whose sorry sight confirmed his earlier misgivings. The group had been decimated not only by dehydration and exhaustion but by infighting over water, rations and direction of travel.

He walked past the doors of the Shadow Academy on the 2nd day of the 1st month of 24 ABY. Before he could even get his bearings, he was initiated into the Dark Jedi Brotherhood and the Sith Order. His possessions were also returned to him at this point, Thy among them. He completed the Test of Lore in three days, eager to take the first true steps into the Brotherhood. He was assigned to House Gladius of Tarentum as an Apprentice, but he barely noticed it, as he spent most of his time in the Shadow Academy poring over the Brotherhood's vast written knowledge. He took and passed nine courses in the space of a few months, mainly ones based on the workings and history of the Brotherhood. This earned him promotions to first Novice and then Acolyte, under the rigorous guidance of Envoy SBM Sato Bruth'Kothae.

Now that he knew more about the Brotherhood, he wanted to get more involved in it and the Clans, instead of just reading about it in the Shadow Academy. He took more permanent residence in the Sword's Sheath of House Gladius and attempted to slot into the daily workings of the House. However, life within the Clan was not as he had expected. He realized then that the only reason he had been assigned to Clan Tarentum was to balance the numbers on the Clan rosters. Disappointed, Korroth returned to the Shadow Academy and begun studying the other Clans of the Brotherhood.

This research led him to request a transfer to Clan Plagueis. He was attracted by the Clan's young yet rich history and by its tradition of mind control powers. Clan Plagueis gave the impression to Korroth of a rising power in the Brotherhood, and the Acolyte wanted to be a part of its ascension.

Clan Plagueis

24 ABY to 27 ABY

Emblem of Clan Plagueis

While settling into House Exar Kun, Korroth continued to study for a large number of SA courses, which he submitted from the Diadem Fortress on Aerun. Between the hours of study, he attempted to become more involved in the House and Clan. He also held a training battle in the [Antei Combat Center] with [Archpriest] al'Lan Mandragoran, after which he was advised to attempt a battle in the Proving Grounds. This activity soon earned him a promotion to Protector, and he was assigned his first Master, SBM Armand "Sunflash" al'Tor. Unfortunately, SBM Armand left the Brotherhood shortly thereafter, so that Korroth didn't have enough time to get acquainted with him. In 25 ABY he was assigned a second Master, KAP Scorpius, who begun organizing his Trials for Guardian. However, due to his duties as Quaestor of House Exar Kun and later as Proconsul of Clan Plagueis, he was not able to prepare these Trials for Protector Korroth.

Between 25 ABY and 26 ABY, Korroth continued to digest the Shadow Academy's vast store of knowledge. In addition, he fought a battle in the ACC's Proving Grounds against [Combat Master] [Dalthid], but he failed the test due to wrong usage of his weapons. He also became involved in documenting the Crimson Tide, a faction of powerful pirates who were the sworn enemies of Clan Plagueis. In 26 ABY Consul Aabsdu Dupar al'Tor promoted Korroth to the rank of Guardian for the service to his Clan and for the many courses he passed in the Shadow Academy.

Late in 26 ABY, Korroth took part in training exercises for the Rite of Supremacy codenamed "Second Darkness". However, he later did not participate in the Rite of Supremacy itself, because his attention was diverted by news from his homeworld of Utapau.

Not Sith Material

27 ABY

In a minor HNN report, almost a footnote among the other headlines, Korroth read that a Buuper Torsckil Abbey Devices factory in the Tarbaur region of Utapau had been sabotaged by a terrorist group named the 'Hrothi Independence Union'. The report did not have any further details. Korroth had no idea where this 'HIU' came from, or what connection it had with his father's family name. The Pau'an had not set foot on his homeland for over a century, and he thought the time had come to see how things had changed. Furthermore, the mention of his old family name intrigued him.

Knowing that he would be gone for quite some time, he requested a transfer to the Rogues, and then he took a shuttle to Utapau. When he landed on Ika, the capital sinkhole of the Tarbaur region, he immediately saw how different the city was from his memories of it. Giant machinery spouting grey smoke occupied the whole upper levels of the sinkhole, and pools of filthy sludge filled its bottom. Most of the Pau'an and Utai population appeared to be working inside the Abbey Devices factories, while those outside either catered directly to the factory workers or begged in the streets.

Disguised as a news reporter, he investigated further and found that Abbey Devices had built factories in all thirteen of the Tarbaur sinkholes, displacing the Pau'an and Utai inhabitants to the lower levels and replacing the local governments with their own Board of Executives. By suppressing the local currency and tightly controlling the flow of the Galactic Credit Standard in Tarbaur, this Board had ensured that only those who worked for Abbey Devices accrued enough money to survive. This made the people of Tarbaur completely dependent on Abbey Devices, and enslaved them to the will of its Board of Executives. This scheme extended even into the Sazarel, where the nomad tribes were forced to produce food and sustenance for the factory workers in the Tarbauri sinkholes.

Some Tarbauri had taken up arms against Abbey Devices, under the name of the Hrothi Independence Union, with the aim of driving the company out of the sinkholes. With the Pau'ans' customary patience, the HIU had laid low for fifty years, and its first strike had been the bombing that Korroth had read about on the holonews. The Board of Executives had retaliated by capturing and imprisoning a certain Ivron Hroth, supposedly the leader of the HIU. Korroth had never heard of that name, but he wanted to find out how this Ivron was associated with the Hroth family, his own family.

By using old connections and acquaintances from his youth, Korroth was able to locate the HIU. He found them leaderless and in disarray, so he took command of the band and organized a second, conclusive coup against the Board of Executives. He planned to first free Ivron Hroth and then storm and destroy each of the Abbey Devices factories in the thirteen sinkholes. This, he reckoned, would be enough to make it unprofitable for Abbey Devices to continue their investments in Tarbaur.

Korroth led the HIU's assault just two months after the first bombing, and in a matter of minutes they had taken control of the detention center. There they found and freed Ivron Hroth. Before being shuttled to a safe house, Ivron told them that Mavane Noren, Korroth's own mother, was held prisoner in another sinkhole. While she had not participated directly in the bombing of two months ago, the elderly Pau'an had been found guilty of abetting the HIU. Korroth resolved to continue the assault as planned, and to free his mother before destroying the third factory, the nearest one to the prison.

The attack on the first factory went according to plan, because the Abbey Devices security force had not been expecting such an aggressive and well-organized offensive. However, after the factory had been demolished, Korroth lost control of the HIU troops, who rampaged unchecked through the sinkhole. The Guardian attempted to rally the rioting soldiers, but to no avail. Meanwhile, Abbey Devices had assembled the security contingents of all the other sinkholes and now descended upon the HIU forces. The greatest part of the HIU became trapped in the sinkhole and was totally massacred. Korroth, Ivron and a small band of survivors managed to escape the carnage and flee north, over the Med Zathruma mountain range and into the Sazareli steppes. They hid among the nomad tribes, and the Abbey Devices forces soon stopped chasing them.

Korroth was deeply affected by the dreadful defeat. He knew that the failure had been caused by his inability to control the soldiers. A better Sith would have been able to restrain his or her troops and lead them to victory, but Korroth had simply not had the strength of character to give orders which the frenzied soldiers would obey. Because of this, the Guardian let Ivron Hroth regain command of the HIU, or what was left of it. He advised Ivron to gather the Sazareli tribes and convince them to join the HIU to strike out at the Board of Executives.

While Ivron did that, Korroth worked to secure off-world supplies of modern weaponry and provisions for an army. He was also able to set up a makeshift laboratory, where, over the course of five months, he developed a poison gas that incapacitated only Humans, which he planned on supplying to the entirely Pau'an and Utai HIU forces.

The HIU struck again in the ninth month of 27 ABY and, with Ivron's leadership of the Sazareli tribes and Korroth's supplies of weapons and poison gas, they were able to fully occupy the sinkhole of Ika. While the HIU consolidated its defenses in the sinkhole, Korroth recovered his hired shuttle, which had been impounded by Abbey Devices after the Guardian had joined the HIU. Inside the shuttle, he found an urgent but outdated message from the Dark Jedi Brotherhood. The message was garbled and filled with static, but Korroth could make out something about a Yuuzhan Vong attack on the Brotherhood.

Without even taking his leave from Ivron Hroth, he departed immediately and set a course for Aerun. He suspected and feared that the message had been a last cry for help from the Brotherhood or Clan Plagueis to any remaining Dark Jedi; that the Yuuzhan Vong invasion had finally and ruinously reached the Brotherhood. However, he couldn't do anything about it while traveling in hyperspace, so he tried to draw his mind away from those terrible thoughts by examining the events of the past few months.

He determined that two separate purposes had driven his actions during that time: his curiosity over Ivron Hroth's identity and connection to his family, and the testing of his skills as a Sith in an environment separate from the Brotherhood. The first purpose he had not been able to satisfy, because there simply had been no time during the preparation for the assault on Abbey Devices. He hoped to one day return to have this question answered and to check on the progress of the HIU. The second purpose, however, had been throughly fulfilled. His failure to command the HIU forces during his first assault, and the success of the second assault due to his counseling to Ivron and the preparations and the poison gas confirmed to him that he was not Sith material. He resolved to convert to the Krath Order when he returned to the Brotherhood; perhaps even a change of House or Clan was due, to start things anew. Thinking back to the message about the Yuuzhan Vong, he could only hope that there would be a House or Clan to go back to.

Krath of Scholae Palatinae

27 ABY to 28 ABY

When Korroth dropped out of hyperspace, he found the Jusadih System surrounded by Plagueian, Arconan, Palatinean and Yuuzhan Vong fleets. The Brotherhood fleets seemed to be generally fighting against the Yuuzhan Vong forces, but Korroth also sensed a conflict between Arcona and the other two Clans. He did not know how Clan politics had developed in his absence, so he did not want to get involved just yet. He determined to seek shelter among Clan Scholae Palatinae, the traditional allies of Clan Plagueis, until he figured out what was going on.

He followed a medical shuttle from the Jusadih System to the Cocytus System, and made a landing on Judecca. In the capital city of Ohmen, Korroth learned that, while he was on Utapau, the Yuuzhan Vong had assailed the gathered Dark Brotherhood fleets and had conquered Antei. The Palatineans themselves were recovering from their recent reclamation of the Cocytus System. On a different note, Korroth also found out that House Acclivis Draco, while a multi-order house, had a very strong Krath tradition. Moreover, its home planet, Antenora, was a desert world. Korroth did not hesitate long before requesting a transfer from the Rogues to House Acclivis Draco of Clan Scholae Palatinae, and from the Sith Order to the Krath Order.

At that time, the Consul of Scholae Palatinae was Phoenix Olkyssagh d'Tana Palpatine, and the Quaestor of Acclivis Draco was RevengeX Palpatine. Korroth was welcomed into the Clan by Knight Class Envoy Braecen Kaeth Kunar who, a week later, apprenticed him to SBM Rasilvenaira StormRaven. However, without his knowledge, he was also transferred to House Caliburnus, since Rasilvenaira was at that time Quaestor of that House. Korroth moved his lodgings to the Serpent's Vanguard on Ptolomea, but despite this he still spent most of his time on Antenora, familiarizing himself with its deserts and its fascinating native people. In an attempt to bring him back to House Caliburnus, his Master assigned him as a Trooper to the newly opened Nightmare Brigade in 28 ABY, but Korroth became even more uninvolved in his House.

The Guardian eventually had himself transferred to the Rogues, but he stayed on Antenora. For around two months he camped in a canyon of the Hollow Lands and explored the complex cave networks that burrowed deep into the cliffs. However, in his infrequent but necessary communications with the nearest center of civilization, the Acclivis Draco HQ, he gained the impression that the members of the House were apprehensive about having a Rogue Dark Jedi on their planet. Korroth decided it was time to return to his homeworld, to see what had happened in the Tarbauri sinkholes since he had left them almost a year ago.

To Be Continued