It wasn't an entirely foolish prediction. For the last thousand years before Kaan's rise, every great Sith uniter had been torn down by betrayal, and there was no good reason for someone living during that time to assume the pattern would end anytime soon.
Little did Chymus know that Kaan's fall would drag the entire Sith Empire to the grave with him. Having all his forces cornered on Ruusan, Kaan defiantly detonated a superweapon which claimed the lives of him and everyone fighting under his banner.
...
Chymus never had the chance to begin his glorious reconquest, his bunker and everyone in it being dragged underground when the great warbeasts he was experimenting on broke free of containment.
As a Sith, Chymus had felt that the true path to power was through Sith Alchemy, his ultimate goal being not just to craft great and terrifying weapons to crush his enemies, but to eventually transform himself into the ultimate being. More than that, he sought some method of injecting his own blood and midichlorians into other creatures to dominate them. It was all amusingly shortsighted and megalomaniacal, his few genuine scientific achievements wasted by his inability to focus on one area of research for very long.
Of great benefit to Tan'ya, and her goal of learning about what the original Sith culture was like, was Chymus' great interest in the original Sith species. Unfortunately, he didn't list his sources clearly, and he didn't include copies of them in his notes, but he did reference a number of other texts outlining the society of the ancient Sith from before first contact.
Chymus believed that the ancient Sith built every level of their society on ritual sacrifice. Alchemy functioned by extracting midichlorians through the blood of the victim, killing them in the process but infusing materials and even other living things with seemingly impossible properties, creating near-indestructible weapons and armor, and reforging ordinary animals and people into terrible tools of war.
According to him, the original sith lived in a cast based society, ruled over by an emperor called the Sith'ari, the most famous of whom was Marka Ragnos. The Lords, or Darths, would mix their own blood and flesh with a class of professional warriors, called massasi, who were modified for war and combat with harder skin, faster reflexes and the inability to feel fear.
He even claimed that during Marka Ragnos's rise to power, a decapitated rival named Simus had somehow clung to life as just a head using some long lost Darkside power.
To Tan'ya, these tales all seemed quite fanciful. She certainly didn't believe that a head without a body lived for so long after such an injury. At the very least it was an interesting read, and finally provided her with a somewhat plausible sounding explanation as to why the First Sith Empire went to war with the Republic.
They were a feudal society, with each member of the Council ruling their own large fiefdom, and delegating rule of individual planets to various servants and family members. As a result, during the transition from one Sith'ari to another, deep internal rifts played a more important role in their politics than concerns over foreign policy. Supposedly, Sith'ari Ragnos had left no clear successor, leading to a succession crisis that almost threatened to break into open civil war. When Republic explorers stumbled upon the empire, the two factions of the Council seized upon the issue, turning it into another political arena in their dispute.
There was some kind of Jedi or Republic raid to rescue these imprisoned explorers, which led to the pro-war faction seizing power under Naga Sadow. With his powerbase secure and expecting him to lead them to victory, Naga Sadow was able to rally the entirety of the Sith Empire behind him, and purge any remaining internal threats. Essentially, the Sith went to war due to a combination of believing they had been attacked first, not knowing how large their foe truly was, and internal political concerns.
It sounded plausible, if perhaps somewhat coincidental. If the explorers had arrived during the reign of Sith'ari Ragnos, or after Naga Sadow was better established in his office, perhaps the two civilisations could have found a way to exist apart from each other?
Or maybe there never was an explorer, and the war was always inevitable.
Whatever the truth was, Tan'ya finally had something to work with for Volume Four. It wasn't a lot, literally a third hand account from a proven megalomaniac referencing second hand accounts that probably no longer existed, but it at least tried to give a Sith's perspective on what happened.
More important and useful than the information on the First Sith Empire, was the knowledge Chymus notes contained regarding the Tirra'taka. Chymus referred to the unmodified dragons of Serenno by their native name, and his own creations as Kissa'ta. The word combined the sithic words for priest with beast, translating roughly to 'priest monster', or maybe 'predator cleric', in reference to the native people's worship of the creatures. At the time he was writing, the Tirra'taka were already on the verge of extinction, having been hunted relentlessly by the Sith since their arrival, and he considered himself quite fortunate to have discovered a mother with a full nest.
Compared to its unmodified relatives in the wild, Kissa'ta grew much faster. Instead of taking two decades to reach adulthood, the warbeast was sustained by the Dark Side, and would reach physical if not mental maturity in just two years. As a result the Kissa'ta were clumsier at first, and mentally unstable, prone to violent mood swings, but more easily controlled by the firm hand of a powerful Sith. Or maybe not, given that a pair of these 'easily controlled' beasts had destroyed Chymus' entire facility.
The native Tirra'taka mostly used the Force for communication with each other, with only a few ever observed to use a gust from their wings with a burst of Force power to stun prey. Kissa'ta had been changed to draw on the Force, and especially the Dark Side more deeply, allowing them to shoot arcs of lightning from their mouths, and making them grow much larger than their unmodified kin. The largest known Tirra'taka had grown to twenty meters from snout to tail, where the Kissa'ta her father rode was more than fifty meters in length.
Interestingly, Chymus made no mention at all of the Kissa'ta's ability to burrow or dig. It certainly didn't sound anything like a trait of the native born versions of the beast. Looking at the creature's large, winged form in the diagram, nothing about it suggested any kind of inclination towards burrowing. It appeared that particular trait was a learned habit, accomplished almost entirely with the Force, and probably what allowed the specimen to escape captivity and turn the table on its own creators.
In the end Tan'ya was left with a fast growing, fast learning, aggressive super predator with a strong pack instinct. One that even its creators had proven they didn't fully understand.
Tan'ya looked towards the incubator where Marnaidu Morma was growing, feeling a touch of worry. The small pink lips and eyes her sister had drawn on the glass casing couldn't disguise the danger potentially lurking inside. The last thing Tan'ya wanted to do was release a dangerous wild animal like that on an unsuspecting public. Not to mention the benefits of taming such a beast were mostly symbolic. It wasn't like she was expecting to actually ride the thing into battle.
With all the risks involved, maybe it really wasn't such a good idea to attempt to raise the beast, especially when they lacked any facilities for it.
Her musings were interrupted by the sudden feeling of Morma's mind brushing up against her own. It had sensed her anxiety, and was trying to figure out what the problem was.
Dismissing her own concerns, Tan'ya quickly fed the egg some comfort and surety, before looking back to her screen. She had already made her decision, and it would upset Madalee if the egg suddenly went away.
...
Aboard the bridge of his personal cruiser, Count Dooku had scarcely made it off Dathomir before his holocom chimed with almost forty messages. He stared at the device blankly for a moment, surprised at the amount, and wondering why so many had built up in such a short time. He had only been with Talzin for a day.
Only it had been more than a day. According to the Calendar, it had been almost a week. Some of the later messages from Athemeene were starting to get worried.
Had he really been so immersed in the Dark Side that he'd lost all track of time?
Even now, he felt a strong temptation to return to the planet's surface and resume his training and meditation.
He was going to have to be more careful about the Dark Side's mind altering effects in the future.
There were calls from his wife, from Tanya, Master Yoda and even Mace Windu had tried to contact him. Thankfully, he'd arranged for Ventress to keep an eye on his official business, so he wasn't overwhelmed with calls on that front.
Dooku was just in the middle of calling his wife to assure her that he was fine, when the device rang again.
This time the number was from the public phone at the New Temple. Reluctantly he answered it, and was surprised to see his son Kenth.
"Dad! Did Tanya really get a pet dragon?! Can I have one too?!"
...
Apparently, chapters write themselves faster when Power Stones are involved. Who knew? Feel free to test the theory go ahead, toss a few my way.
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