After asking Adrian to magnify the system we were heading towards, Sareh stood near the holoprojector, her arms tightly folded under her chest, staring at the star chart without blinking, just looking at it for about a minute or so. Right until Vila lost her temper, that is.
"Alright," She began, raising her voice, even clapping her hands. "You said you know this place. Start talking already!"
Flinching once, Sareh didn't answer immediately, but at least she finally blinked, looking through the image, right at us, and the feeling I caught, the one that was swirling in her, told me enough: this was bad. Not only a bad feeling, but an actually terrible one.
"…Nathema," she began as she raised a shield around her mind, shutting me out so I couldn't read her, only if I began pushing, but I didn't want to offend her. "Or Medriaas, as it was known before. It was a Sith world or colony, call it whatever you want."
[Correction: Medriaas was the original designation of the world; Nathema came after.]
"Thank you," Sareh muttered, rubbing her temple. "Very helpful, but it doesn't matter in this case."
"What happened there?" I asked, steepling my fingers, "Because you are genuinely afraid of that place."
"Oh, I am." She looked at me. "More than you think. If there is a ruin I for sure don't want to explore, it's that planet. It's a dead world."
"And?" Adrian asked, raising an eyebrow. "There are millions of planetoids like that in the Galaxy."
"Not like this. You'll see," She said as if warning us, "Just get down to it... Then you will understand what dead really means. Of course, it wasn't always what it is now," she added, "Medriaas was a thriving world, pretty advanced and well populated, part of the Sith Empire, the actual Empire, the one that fell when they attacked the Republic. The Great Hyperspace War..." She muttered, falling silent, "Can I?" She asked suddenly, looking at Adrian, who finally handed over the control tablet. Soon, the holoprojector shifted, showing a lush world with cities, oceans, and everything to make it like any other delightful world you could visit for a good holiday. "This is just an artistic rendition, from clues I learned. It looked like this in its glory days, and..." The image flickered and dimmed the next moment. "This is it now."
The only difference that I saw at first was that the very first image had people on it... the other did not. As if everyone just left, but that's all.
"It's the same," Adrian said at once, but before I could speak, noticing the key detail, Vila caught on to it too.
"It's not." She muttered, looking at it with a twitching eye, "It's worse..."
"It's desaturated," Adrian reasoned, but before we could argue, Sareh continued her explanation.
"As for what we know," She said, glancing at us, "comes from fragmented Sith records and scattered Republic intelligence reports, including later Jedi holocrons that talked about their experiences after visiting the dead world. So, we have nothing complete and foolproof, nothing consistent. Take whatever I say with a grain of salt."
[Supplementary Statement: Historical accuracy is not of importance. What matters is the truth of the outcome.]
"Yes," Sareh nodded reluctantly. "The outcome is indeed what matters."
"Of what?" Adrian asked, and with a quiet sigh, Sareh tapped the console, and a Sith face appeared on the image.
"Tenebrae," she said, "And his Nathema... the ritual."
"Is this who you saw?" Vila asked me, but then I shook my head.
"No, it isn't. They look different; this one is not even close to the other Sith's visage."
"You couldn't have seen him, because he would be the last to inter himself into a droid. And he is destroyed, not just in body but spirit, too! Completely wiped out. Dead. Dead as dead can be!" Sareh snorted, but I could tell how relieved she was, deathly afraid I was about to say it's the same face I had talked to. "Excuse me..." She took a deep breath, then returned to her explanation, "He was born on Medriaas, even a prodigy among the Sith, a rarely seen one! He was exceptionally powerful, even as a child..."
[Clarification: Subject later known as Vitiate. Also identified as the Sith Emperor and the Eternal Emperor. The prime target for elimination... Statement: I wish I were the one who put a hole in his head.]
"The Sith Emperor?" Vila blinked her eyes, looking back and forth between HK and Sareh as she asked, "I never heard of him before, but is this the one... that the Grandmaster went to check up on? Or his world?"
"We are going to his world, no?" Adrian asked, making Sareh grunt and rub her face. "There are two of the same worlds? Can't be..."
"Yes and no, please, do listen," Sareh said quietly, recollecting herself. "It gets complicated here! Because both statements are correct. This is the issue! He did what Palpatine wished to be: he made himself kind of Immortal, and, more than that, at one point, he even split his soul to rule over two places at once. Like... having a backup. I don't know the ritual that bestowed him with such powers, but its cost was the entire planet. Then, he left, created his own Sith empire, and pulled the strings from there."
[Statement: He killed my Master. Correction: My Master had the last laugh.]
"..." Vila and I just exchanged glances, while Sareh was now looking at HK with a new glint in her eyes.
"I never knew... that you were that model! But it makes sense..." She muttered, suddenly licking her lips, her gaze becoming hungry as she watched HK, so I spoke up.
"Sareh, can we get back to the world, please?"
"Yeah," She closed her eyes briefly, calming herself down, "…Yes," she said again, shaking herself a little, "As I said, the world got consumed when Tenebrae performed his ritual. He gathered all the Sith Lords who were afraid when they lost the war, and the Republic was pushing in on them, liberating their worlds from their rule."
[Statement: Eight thousand Sith Lords is the commonly accepted estimate.]
"Eight thousand?" Vila blinked, and even my mouth hung open in shock. "He killed that many?"
[Clarification: Consumed.]
"HK is right. He ate the entire population as a dessert, too," Sareh continued. "Every living being, every animal, every plant, even the Force itself, became his dinner, transforming him into something else."
"That's not possible." Vila snorted, but I don't know... it felt very much possible, and I could tell that Sareh was telling the truth, or at least, what she believed to be the truth.
"That's what everyone says," Sareh replied, shrugging, "but I can't prove it. But my sources are drawn from multiple recollections of Sith and Jedi of that era, including notes from Revan himself."
[Confirmation: It was done. Meatbag Sareh is telling the truth. I know.]
"What happened after?" Adrian asked, not entirely buying the topic, but he hadn't complained about it either, looking back and forth between us, sometimes shaking his head in disbelief.
"He became something else, that's why I said it's complicated." Sareh murmured, crossing her arms once again, "He was killed twice, in fact. And those are just deaths, not the final obliteration, that finally got rid of the Galaxy of his abnormal existence. The immortality I mentioned meant that he stopped aging and that he couldn't die, well, at least, not in any conventional way. He… transcended. That's why, when his Tenebrae version, his real body was defeated and destroyed, he didn't really die and lived on as the Eternal Empire's ruler, continuing like nothing happened. Death was just an inconvenience."
"Stop for a moment!" Adrian raised a hand, "This is all nice and well, I love history, it makes me sleepy... Anyway, what I'm asking is, if we are chasing a Sith, shouldn't they have been consumed by this grand immortal? So... to me, this is contradictory."
"Not the entire Sith Empire died, just those on the planet." Sareh shook her head, "He then gathered the rest and left to rebuild, disappearing for thousands of years."
"Is our Sith... Maybe he was consumed in that ritual?" Vila asked, making us fall silent, then she continued, "But then, the droids... What is up with the Eternal Empire... This is so baaad! It's so convoluted!"
"Yes." Sareh nodded with an understanding smile, "It is a mess, and all because he was someone that was like a spider in a Galaxy-spanning web's center, pulling countless strings, always coming back as the secret, dark lord. But, I... I have... a theory. It is based only on my guesses, but from what I have seen so far, I am fairly certain of it. I just won't have any proof to present to you all."
"Not that we have or had any until now..." I moaned, rubbing my face because this felt more than we bargained for. "Out with it, it is better than fumbling in the dark."
"The Eternal Empire's technology was, and maybe still is, something that we wouldn't understand fully. They nearly conquered the Galaxy with it! But it wasn't made by the Sith; they only found it. But... knowing them, who says throughout the countless years, they didn't try to crack the secrets and recreate them? Who wouldn't want to do that?"
"Aaaand?" Vila asked, watching her, wanting Sareh to get to the point faster.
"I am ruling out the option that our target was a Sith who lived on Medriaas or survived the ritual. My guess is that he was living in the new Sith Empire, the one Tenebrae established. I would even bet a lot that we are looking at someone who was doing his best to reverse-engineer the Eternal Empire's machinery. As for why...? I don't know. Was it at Tenebrae's orders? Or did he have his own agenda? Maybe both."
"That's still just wild guesswork," Adrian said, making Sareh fall silent and nod.
"Let's say, we go with that," I offered, trusting the Force, because a hunch of a Jedi or someone like Sareh was usually more trustworthy than just random guesses. "What do we hope to find at this dead planet?"
"The location of Dromund Kaas," Sareh answered at once.
"Never heard of a planet like that." Adrian muttered, looking through the database, "Nope... another uncharted system's name. I'll add it to the list..."
"It was the new Sith Empire's capital planet." She said flatly, "If my theory is right, and we are dealing with a Sith who lived under Tenebrae's rule, when he was still ruling both empires at once, he would have retreated there now. It is the perfect hiding place for someone like our Sith droid."
"Another Sith planet?" Vila moaned, smiling, "Well, at least we would have something to go on..."
"After we get to Medriaas," Sareh continued, sounding determined even though she wanted to avoid that place as much as humanly possible, "We will have to search for something, a database, anything, to find a clue where Dromund Kaas is... Because if we find that planet, I think we'll find the core of our issues."
"And if not?" Adrian asked suddenly.
"You still get to test your ship and sensors," Sareh said without a pause, making Adrian smile.
"Touché... I have no more questions."
[Statement: I was unable to help my Master and kill the man...] HK suddenly began, looking at the holo, right until Adrian turned it off.
"HK?" I asked, standing up and looking at him.
[Honest Request: Meatbag Kael. If we find this Sith or droid... Let me finish him off.]
"Don't worry," I patted his metallic shoulders, "You will have a clear shot at him, I can promise you that."