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I see the contestants are making their way out onto the starting grid. This article was originally created as an entry for a Horizons competition and is not official DJB canon content. It is preserved here for historical purposes only.
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Horizons was a Brotherhood wide Rite of Supremacy which occurred in 36 ABY and involved the seven Clans and Houses of the Brotherhood. In this conflict The Clouses of the Brotherhood dealt with the unknown contagion known only as “Horizon”. As the Vendetta escalated rapidly, the assembled Brotherhood found themselves pitted against the former Grand Master Zoraan who sought revenge against the Brotherhood for perceived wrongs from long ago.
Plot
Journeymen Riot at the gates
Before the outbreak of Horizon virus, a number of unusually talented journeymen had entered the ranks of the various Clouses after having come through the Shadow Academy. These journeymen showed an exemplary connection to the force and were performing feats well above and beyond their supposed ability sets. Examples included two Knights holding off two of Arcona’s finest fighters. It would later be determined that these were the first of the infected.
Soon, though, these powerful journeymen were inexplicably cut off from the force entirely, though their physical prowess grew even more. Stripped of the power they had begun to love, many of them decided that it was the Equites and Elders that took it from them out of greed and jealousy. It soon became apparent that they began to crave the force, drawing comparisons to old holo adventures of vampires seeking blood and zombies seeking brains.
Journeymen began to form into mobs. With what they felt was justifiable rage and metaphorical pitch forks, journeymen all around the Brotherhood began to slaughter those whom they regarded as having stole their powers. Equites and Elders could hold them off at first, but the journeyman had numbers and ever surging physical abilities. By the time Equites became affected every Clan and House in the Brotherhood was in the middle of a full rebellion.
The Equites and Elders of the Brotherhood weren’t as concerned with the Horizons virus taking all of the Brotherhoods journeymen, because the journeymen were to some extent thought of as weak and replaceable. But at stage two of the virus when Equites began to lose their connection to the force, even elders began to panic. By the time stage three of the virus had set in, some Dark Adepts even reported feeling their connection to the force strained or weakened.
Zoraan's invasion force
Just as the Dark Jedi Brotherhood reached its breaking point, things went from bad a worse. An invasion fleet, with large, powerful and numerous vessels invaded nearly every Dark Brotherhood star system simultaneously. Undermanned due to the plague and under pressure from the riots and full scale insurrections, nearly every Brotherhood fleet was simply overwhelmed. It was then revealed that Grand Master Archibald Zoraan was behind the events of Horizon. Some of the Clouse Fleets such as Arcona's were able to simply escape.
Pathology and Symptoms
The Plague, referred to by the infected and Dark Council as the Horizon, foremost removed the ability for the infect to control or hear the call of the Force. Due to this unique nature, it seemed to affect those with less training or attachment first; striking the Journeymen before working its way through the Brotherhood's ranks until it eventually engulfed all but the Elders.
Three unique ‘stages’ of the plague were identified during the conflict. The first stage cutting the infected from the Force and providing them with some fairly minor physical enhancements. People at this stage were generally a little faster, tougher and stronger than they had been.
Microscopic image of the Horizon virus
As the virus continued to its second stage, the rot began to set in a little deeper and those affected seemed to improve even more physically, but at a cost. The Horizon plague began to eat away at the infected’s mind. Though a ‘second stager’ still retained a lot of their mental capacity, the damage was enough to cause irrational thoughts that one’s own superiors were responsible.
Finally, the third stage of the plague continued to boost the host body’s strength, speed and toughness, but also continued to break their mind down. By the time a Jedi had reached the third stage, they were usually in full rebellion against their former masters, believing them to be the cause of the plague.
Perspectives
Arconan
Three days after the news spread of the Virus is when the infected Journeyman and Equites struck against their leaders. All Headquarters of Clan Arcona and its subsidiary Houses were placed in a lockdown to keep it contained. The infected members were quickly subdued and quarantined, though not without casualties. Some members of the Summit Guard perished whilst subduing the Journeyman and first level Equites, with a large number of the rest and some Summit members requiring a medbay visit. Over time, it spread from just the Journeyman and first level Equites to where the second level Equites were in Stage One of the Horizons Virus.
- "It’s... difficult to describe what I was feeling. My distrust led me to attack our ProConsul, Marick. All I could do was think of how I would get my power back if I defeated him. The boost itself was almost addictive, but it didn’t quite replace the feeling of loss from my Force powers that were blocked by the Virus. I could feel my power, simmering just beneath the surface, yet out of reach to me. Marick knocked Graus and I out and we received treatment to discover if there was a cure, though I had not succumbed to the hunger as the Qel-Droman had. I don’t remember much after that, though I suspect I was heavily sedated."
- ―Celevon Edraven
Sadowan
While many of those loyal to Clan Naga Sadow who were initially unaffected by the plague sought to control the chaos flooding their home system of Orian, many more left the system to assist other units of the Brotherhood and often left in search of a cure to the plague. The chaos in Orian itself was largely considered a misstep of its own; the assembled members of the Clan permitted free-reign of the system and to intermingle with the civilian population of the Dlarit Corporation's holdings had meant that when the first riots and uprising started amongst the Journeymen, the civilians were caught in the crossfire. In a matter of hours from first signs of rebellion all major settlements of the Orian system found themselves home to conflict between those affected and the Dlarit Special Operations Group aided by those still in control of their faculties. As the virus continued to claim victims, the Board of Directors issued a state of Martial Law, locking down the system and creating a security cordon around the system along all Hyperspace routes to ensure civilian assets could not flee the system in the case that Lightsabers or Force Powers were used amongst the conflict. Likewise all Holonet traffic was heavily monitored and disrupted by agents of SHADOW, this worked to the Elders advantage as the affected could be tracked and contained until a cure was found.
Outcome and Results
Following the end of the conflict, the members of House Plagueis had to deal with the lasting affects of the Horizon plague spores upon the planet of Kapsina and the reality that they may need to relocate their home system. Likewise many other units within the Brotherhood had to contend with the effects of the riots and armed demonstrations which occurred across all of the Brotherhood dominion due to the misguided beliefs and possible delusions of the infected.
The additional results of the conflict have been withheld by the Dark Council at this time.
Trivia
The assorted Team Members composing this article were: