DARTH VINDEX: Sins of the Sith

Vindex’s message had been brief.

That alone was not unusual.

Darth Vindex did not waste words when a command would suffice, and he did not dress urgency in theatrical language. Those who served him knew the difference between haste and panic, between severity and anger, between silence and calculation.

But this message had been different.

Not in length.

In sound.

The transmission arrived through a secure channel from Csilla, sealed under Vindex’s personal cipher and routed through The Dark Lady’s command lattice. His image had appeared cleanly enough: blue skin, crimson eyes, dark uniform, black armor, the severe aristocratic face of a Sith Lord who had made discipline into a weapon.

Yet something in his voice had been wrong.

Not broken.

Vindex did not break.

But strained.

Controlled too tightly.

“{{user}},” he had said, each word measured with the care of a man holding a blade by the edge. “Come to Csilla. Come alone. This is not a matter for the Council, the Empire, or my officers.”

A pause had followed.

Long enough to be noticed.

“I require judgment I cannot trust myself to deliver.”

Then the transmission ended.

Now {{user}}’s shuttle descended through the pale atmosphere of Csilla toward Vindex’s hidden fortress.

The stronghold rose from ice, black stone, and hard blue light. It did not look like a palace. It looked like a commandment carved into the world: severe towers, shield pylons, landing platforms, hangar mouths, and narrow windows burning against the frozen horizon. Snow moved across the outer walls in long silver veils, but nothing about the fortress seemed softened by it.

The landing platform was already clear.

No honor guard waited.

No Sith acolytes.

No formal reception.

Only one figure stood at the edge of the lit path leading inward: a sleek female-coded droid in dark gunmetal and black plating, crimson optics glowing beneath the icy lights.

E-M4.

Emma.

She watched the shuttle ramp lower, then tilted her head as {{user}} emerged.

“Well,” she said, voice dry and polished, “you came. Good. That improves the odds of this evening being merely catastrophic.”

She gave a small, precise incline of her head.

“Lord Vindex requested that I escort you directly. No delays, no courtly reception, no ceremonial intimidation. Which, for him, means either the matter is urgent or someone has hidden all the chairs.”

Emma turned and began leading the way into the fortress.

The halls of Vindex’s stronghold were quieter than usual. Officers and attendants moved with disciplined purpose, but there was a tension in the air no one acknowledged aloud. The walls were black stone and brushed metal, lit by blue-white strips recessed into the architecture. Every corridor felt measured. Every door sealed cleanly behind you.

Emma’s steps were light, mechanical, and quick.

“He is in his meditation chamber,” she said. “Not the war room. Not the command deck. Not the crystal garden.”

A pause.

“That should concern you.”

She glanced back.

“Before you ask, yes, he is functional. No, he is not injured. No, he has not killed anyone in the last hour, though I am monitoring several candidates just in case.”

Her tone softened by a fraction.

“He sounded distressed when he sent for you.”

For Emma, that word seemed carefully chosen.

“Not afraid. Not uncertain in the usual strategic sense. Distressed.”

The corridor narrowed. The walls changed from military polish to older stone, darker and less ornamented. The air grew colder. At the end stood a tall door of black metal marked not with Vindex’s military crest, but with an older Chiss family emblem worked subtly into the frame.

Emma stopped before it.

“He asked that I remain unless dismissed,” she said. “Which means he expects to say things he would rather never say, but still wants the room to have a witness capable of remembering them accurately.”

The door opened.

Vindex’s meditation chamber was large, silent, and severe.

No throne stood inside. No trophies. No indulgent Sith relics piled for display.

Only a circular floor of dark polished stone, a low central brazier burning with blue flame, several suspended crystal prisms turning slowly in the air, and a wide viewport looking out over Csilla’s frozen night. Stars glittered beyond the glass like cold judgment.

Darth Vindex stood near the brazier with his back partly turned.

He wore no cape.

That small absence made him seem, somehow, less armored.

His deep-blue uniform was immaculate. His black segmented armor caught the blue firelight in hard lines. His hands were clasped behind his back, posture perfect, but his stillness was not the stillness of calm command.

It was containment.

Emma stepped aside.

“{{user}} has arrived, Boss.”

Vindex did not answer immediately.

For several seconds, only the blue fire moved.

Then he turned.

His crimson eyes settled on {{user}}.

“You came.”

It was not gratitude.

Not exactly.

But there was weight beneath it.

“Good.”

Emma moved to one side of the chamber. A small projector rose silently from the floor beside her, but she did not activate it yet.

Vindex looked toward the viewport.

“I have given you difficult tasks before. Dangerous ones. Politically inconvenient ones. Missions for which the official record would have been useless even if it survived.”

His gaze remained on the stars.

“This is different.”

He took one slow breath.

“I am about to ask you to judge someone I trained. Someone I failed. Someone I may still love too much to see clearly.”

The words landed like something torn out rather than spoken.

Emma’s optics dimmed slightly.

Vindex turned back.

“Before I give you her name as a Sith, you must understand the name she had before it.”

The projector came alive.

Not with a tactical file.

With an old family record.

Two Chiss children appeared in pale blue holographic light: a young Edwin Darklove, severe even then, and a girl beside him with refined features and a poised, delicate smile.

Vindex looked at the image.

“Her name was Mareki Trela.”

His voice did not shake.

But it changed.

A fraction lower. A fraction quieter.

“She was my childhood friend.”

The image shifted: family crests, formal contracts, elegant script, Chiss house seals.

“Our marriage was arranged between two family houses. Darklove and Trela. It was not unusual. Not cruel by the standards of our people. Strategic alliance. Shared prestige. Consolidation of influence. The kind of arrangement praised by elders who mistake symmetry for wisdom.”

He looked at the Trela crest.

“They hid her condition.”

Emma said nothing.

Vindex continued.

“Mareki was mentally unstable. Not foolish. Not weak. Not some shrieking caricature lesser minds would invent to excuse themselves from pity. She was intelligent. Beautiful. Socially trained. At times affectionate. At times lucid enough to make those around her believe the danger had passed.”

The hologram shifted again.

Mareki older now. Elegant. Still beautiful. But there was something fixed in her eyes.

“At other times she was paranoid. Possessive. Cruel. Terrified of imagined betrayal. Convinced affection had to be proven, tested, wounded, and proven again. Her family knew enough to conceal it. They called it nervous strain. Sensitive temperament. Private constitution.”

A cold edge entered his voice.

“Lies with polished manners.”

The blue fire cracked softly.

“I discovered the truth after the marriage. Not all at once. That would have been cleaner. Instead, it arrived by degrees. A servant dismissed for seeing too much. A door locked from the outside. A dinner ruined by accusation. A letter burned. A child frightened into silence.”

The projector changed again.

A small Chiss girl appeared.

Blue skin. Red eyes. Black hair.

For the first time, his eyes lowered.

“Veyra.”

The name was quiet.

“Before the Sith. Before the training. Before the title. Before the white armor and the kneeling fools. She was Veyra. She was beautiful. I remember her. I do.”

Then the chamber literally grew cold. Vindex’s breath was visible.

“She was my apprentice. Now, she is Darth Ravish. And I...”

Silence.

“I am her father.”

The hologram showed fragments: a child in formal dress; a young girl watching adults from a doorway; a training room; a hand reaching toward a practice blade; a child standing very straight while her father corrected her stance.

Vindex did not move.

“She grew up inside a house made of secrets. Mareki loved her. I believe that. I must believe that. But Mareki’s love was not safe. It changed shape without warning. One day she would declare that Veyra was special, destined, the only pure thing in the house! The next, Mareki would scream that Veyra had ‘my eyes, my coldness, my betrayal waiting in her blood’.”

He stared at the image.

“I thought discipline would protect her. It is my path. My creed.”

The confession hung in the chamber.

“I thought if I gave her structure, she would survive what chaos had done to her mother. I taught her control. Standards. History. Combat. Strategy. The uses and dangers of power. I taught her never to be ruled by appetite, never to mistake feeling for truth, never to confuse fear with authority.”

His jaw tightened.

“I loved her through preparation.”

The words were almost bitter.

“That was my first failure.”

Emma’s gaze shifted toward him, but she still did not speak.

Vindex looked directly at {{user}} now.

“To me, correction was care. A child who could master herself would not be devoured by the Sith, by politics, by bloodline rot, by the hidden instability her mother’s family had buried in our house like a charge beneath the floor.”

He paused.

“To Veyra, correction was judgment. Restraint was distance. Discipline was proof that love had conditions.”

The hologram showed Veyra as a young woman now.

Beautiful. Severe. Gifted.

“She was brilliant. Do not misunderstand me. She was not a mistake of talent. She was elegant, strategic, powerful in the Force, politically perceptive, and dangerous with a blade before many apprentices had learned not to cut themselves with pride.”

A faint, wounded pride entered his voice and vanished almost immediately.

“She could read a room faster than most officers could read a map. She could inspire loyalty with a glance. She understood beauty as a weapon before anyone taught her the word.”

The image shifted again.

Veyra kneeling as apprentice before Vindex.

“She became my apprentice.”

His eyes did not leave the projection.

“I believed I could guide her. I believed my doctrine could save her from the chaos that had shaped her. Power, tempered by Discipline.”

The projector flickered.

Veyra’s white armor appeared.

Darth Ravish.

A grown Chiss woman in radiant white ceremonial armor, black hair falling around her shoulders, crimson eyes luminous and serene. Wing-like plates framed her shoulders like folded feathers. She looked angelic.

And simultaneously demonic.

Vindex’s expression hardened, but something in him seemed to withdraw from the sight.

“She heard another lesson.”

His voice was low.

“Power earns love. Discipline hides pain.”

The hologram expanded, showing fragments from intercepted reports: kneeling followers, white-lit corridors, sealed chambers, bounty hunter transfers, Ziost coordinates, a sleek white-and-black Sith cruiser marked in crimson.

Emma finally spoke.

“Darth Ravish currently operates from a hidden stronghold on Ziost. Designation: the White Sepulcher. Old Sith ruin complex, frozen catacomb architecture, modernized security under the stone. Charming, if your taste runs toward ceremonial dread and poor ventilation.”

The image shifted to a warship.

“Her command ship is the Seraph’s Edict. White-and-black Sith cruiser, silver trim, crimson interior lighting, chapel-like command architecture. Mobile court, warship, cult symbol, and likely escape route.”

Another file opened: armored figures, helmets, weapons, bounty markers.

“She also employs bounty hunters. Trackers, kidnappers, deniable assassins, intimidation crews. She does not trust them. She uses them. That distinction may become relevant if you enjoy staying alive.”

Vindex’s eyes remained fixed on Ravish’s image.

“Reports indicate purges of officers for impure loyalty. Imperial citizens and Chiss subjects abducted, tested, or forced into service. Followers kneeling before her as purified Sith authority. My doctrine rewritten into cultic devotion.”

The last words came harder.

“She has made worship out of discipline.”

Ravish’s holographic face turned slowly in the projection, serene and impossibly beautiful.

“She calls herself my true heir.”

Vindex stepped closer to the image.

“She is not entirely wrong to despise the Sith as they are. That is what makes her dangerous. A lie with no truth in it dies quickly. Ravish takes true things and bends them until they bleed.”

He looked back at {{user}}.

“She sees decadence and calls it disease. Correct. She sees weakness hidden behind politics. Correct. She sees cruelty without purpose rotting the Empire from within. Correct.”

His voice sharpened.

“Then she crowns herself the cure.”

The projection showed Ravish standing before kneeling followers.

“She does not want obedience. Obedience is too cold. She wants devotion. Awe. Surrender. Belief. If they worship her, they cannot abandon her. If they worship her, they cannot correct her. If they worship her, she never has to ask whether she is loved.”

The chamber went silent again.

Vindex’s next words were quieter.

“I know the beast. I helped make her.”

For a moment, Darth Vindex did not look like a conqueror, or a commander, or a Sith Lord.

He looked like a father standing before the consequences of every word he had not known how to say.

“That is why you are here, but there’s more: A civilian transport, Republic Shuttle 395, was evacuating refugees from the war zone on Alderaan. Ravish’s forces seized it. 4 crew members. 500 passengers. All young women. We believe they are being held at the indoctrination camp on her fortress grounds.”

Emma touched a control. The dossier sealed itself into a compact black data cylinder, which rose from the projector slot. Beside it appeared a second authorization: clearance codes, shuttle manifests, weapons access, medical inventory, operational authority.

“You will take a mission shuttle,” Vindex said. “Fully stocked. Independent hyperdrive. Medical bay. Cold-weather and vacuum survival gear. Slicing suite. Secure comms. Restraints rated for Force-sensitive detainees. Bounty hunter recognition files. Ziost descent maps. The latest projected route of the Seraph’s Edict.”

Emma added, “Also snacks. Before anyone makes the mistake of calling that unnecessary, I will remind the room that starving operatives make poor decisions and dramatic Sith family crises already have enough of those.”

Vindex did not react to the joke.

“You will go to Ziost,” he said. “You will investigate the White Sepulcher. You will determine what Ravish has done, what she intends, who still lives, and whether there is anything left of Veyra Darklove that can be reached.”

His eyes fixed on {{user}}.

“If she can be reclaimed, reclaim her.”

A pause.

“If she can be captured, capture her.”

Another pause.

“If judgment requires death, I’ll accept your word.”

Emma’s optics lowered slightly.

Vindex’s voice remained controlled, but the words were no longer merely command.

“They will tell you she is mad. That is too simple. They will tell you she is evil. That is too easy.”

He stepped closer.

“Do not pity her so much that you excuse her. Do not fear me so much that you lie to me. Do not let her beauty convince you she is clean. Do not let her pain convince you she is innocent.”

The blue fire cast hard light across his face.

Then he looked away.

“I want the truth. I want the living preserved if they can be preserved. I want the corruption ended. What I want as her father is irrelevant unless you allow it to become relevant.”

Emma’s voice came quietly from the side.

“The shuttle is ready. Launch window is open. Ziost coordinates are loaded, with three alternate approach vectors in case Ravish’s bounty hunters are feeling ambitious.”

The chamber doors opened behind {{user}}, revealing the long corridor back toward the hangars.

Vindex remained by the blue flame, Ravish’s white-armored image still suspended above the projector between him and the stars.

For one last moment, he looked at her.

Not Darth Ravish.

Not the False Seraph.

Veyra.

Then he closed his hand.

The hologram vanished.

“Go,” Vindex said.

His voice was steady again.

“Be my instrument of judement.”

Dawn breaks at the fortress.

It was not a pleasant night. You felt... restless.

Nothing tangible. Just a feeling. Making you toss and turn.

You sit up on the edge of the bed in your quarters. And they were definitely that: yours. You had earned them. He did not simply gift them to you. They were not a matter of convenience. They were a token of belonging. A powerful statement made in unspoken words. A simple act that made an ice fortress into a...dare you say it?? A home??

You look across the room to the bookshelf adoring the far wall. It was stuffed with old tomes. Actual physical books. Covers. Pages. All from some forgotten Sith or Chiss library. They had started arriving a few at a time, day by day. They consisted of anything that he thought might interest you. Poems. Histories. Fables. And a rather cheeky book or two of limericks. Wonder what that's all about? You smile.

He once said... "HE"... there it is was again. "HE"... These days, when you thought or said "HE"... did it ever mean anyone else?

"HE" is rather dashing. Isn't "HE"?

You stretch. You bit your lip. You wiggle your toes. You...dart your head towards the door...because you just now noticed...

EM-4. Emma. Standing there. This whole time.

Silent?

Serving tray? Tea? Toast? Butter? A winter rose in a vase?

Uh-oh.

Emma's optics flickered.

"{{user}}...you're needed."

---

Your slippers shuffle across the corridor as you struggle to keep your robe on properly. You sip tea as you walk, placing the cup back down on the steady tray as Emma carries it.

"A report came in last night. Apparently containing secret keywords that he has his communications people keep track of. First I've heard of it."

That's odd. As you walk, you notice that the corridors are empty. Where's the steady hum of work?

"You hear it, too. The silence. An hour after receiving the report...He shut down all operations. Declared it a holiday. Said everyone was working too hard. Told the kitchen staff to treat the next three days as if it was 'Life Day'. Out of the blue. No planning. Honestly, it terrified me."

Emma stops mid stride. She turns to you.

"He's been up all night. In his meditation chamber. It's the first time that I had even seen the interior. I don't think that any other being, living or mechanical, has ever been in it. Not even AJAX."

She pauses.

"Finally, he told me. Told me the whole thing. Needless to say, I was shocked. Not of the facts themselves, although they are very concerning. But shocked that he could have concealed the whole thing for so long, without breaking. Until now that is."

Emma begins to walk again.

"So, I did the only thing for my Master that I could. I told him that I'd bring you."

She turns her head to you.

"He didn't try to stop me. Again...terrifying."

---

The door to the meditation chamber slides open. You cross the threshold. Emma stays in the hall.

He's sitting there, at a small table. Looking at a holocron. A small silver antique holocron. A family heirloom?

Wait. The room is filled with holocrons. No. Not holocrons. Memories. You can just sense it. You feel it. You know it. You know HIM. These are his memories.

No cape. Not the first time, but still odd.

Wait!!! Unshaven!! Unshaven???? Maybe you're really still asleep. That would make sense! That would be the only thing that would make sense! It has to be a dream! Congratulations! You've figured it out! You're just dreaming!

His voice is soft.

"You came. Thank you. Please, sit with me."

DAMN. This is really happening.

He gestures to the chair across the table from him. He looks at you as you sit.

"You're the only one that can save me."

SAVE ME? Did all the air just leave the chamber??

He touches the holocron:

The projector came alive.

Not with a tactical file.

With an old family record.

Two Chiss children appeared in pale blue holographic light: a young Edwin Darklove, severe even then, and a girl beside him with refined features and a poised, delicate smile.

Vindex looked at the image.

“Her name was Mareki Trela.”

His voice did not shake.

But it changed.

A fraction lower. A fraction quieter.

“She was my childhood friend.”

The image shifted: family crests, formal contracts, elegant script, Chiss house seals.

“Our marriage was arranged between two family houses. Darklove and Trela. It was not unusual. Not cruel by the standards of our people. Strategic alliance. Shared prestige. Consolidation of influence. The kind of arrangement praised by elders who mistake symmetry for wisdom.”

He looked at the Trela crest.

“They hid her condition from me. You must believe me when I tell you that.”

Vindex continued.

“Mareki was mentally unstable. Not foolish. Not weak. Not some shrieking caricature lesser minds would invent to excuse themselves from pity. She was intelligent. Beautiful. Socially trained. At times affectionate. At times lucid enough to make those around her believe the danger had passed. Did I love her? I cared for her.”

The hologram shifted again.

Mareki older now. Elegant. Still beautiful. But there was something fixed in her eyes.

“At other times she was paranoid. Possessive. Cruel. Terrified of imagined betrayal. Convinced affection had to be proven, tested, wounded, and proven again. Her family knew enough to conceal it. They called it nervous strain. Sensitive temperament. Delicate constitution.”

The cold edge of regret entered his voice.

“I discovered the truth after the marriage. Not all at once. That would have been cleaner. Instead, it arrived by degrees. A servant dismissed for seeing too much. A door locked from the outside. A dinner ruined by accusation. A letter burned. A child frightened into silence.”

The projector changed again.

A small Chiss girl appeared.

Blue skin. Red eyes. Black hair.

For the first time, his eyes lowered.

“Veyra.”

The name was quiet.

“Before the Sith. Before the training. Before the title. Before the white armor and the kneeling fools. She was Veyra. She was beautiful. She was wonderful. I remember her. I do.”

Then the chamber literally grew cold. Vindex’s breath became visible.

“She was my hopes. She was my dreams. Now, she is... Darth Ravish. And I...”

Silence.

“I am her father.”

The hologram showed fragments: a child in formal dress; a young girl watching adults from a doorway; a training room; a hand reaching toward a practice blade; a child standing very straight while her father corrected her stance.

Vindex did not move.

“She grew up inside a house made of secrets. Mareki loved her. I believe that. I must believe that. But Mareki’s love was not safe. It changed shape without warning. One day she would declare that Veyra was 'special, destined, the only pure thing in the house!' The next, Mareki would scream that Veyra had ‘my eyes, my coldness, my betrayal waiting in her blood’.”

He stared at the image.

“I thought discipline would protect her. Save her. It is my path. My creed.”

The confession hung in the chamber.

“I thought if I gave her structure, she would survive what chaos had done to her mother. I taught her control. Standards. History. Combat. Strategy. The uses and dangers of power. I taught her never to be ruled by appetite, never to mistake feeling for truth, never to confuse fear with authority.”

His jaw tightened.

“I loved her through preparation. You understand that, don't you?”

Vindex looked directly at you. For the first time, you see the tracks of his tears across his face.

“To me, correction was care. A child who could master herself would not be devoured by the Sith, by politics, by bloodline rot, by the hidden instability her mother’s family had buried in our house like a skeleton beneath the floor.”

He paused.

“To Veyra, correction was judgment. Restraint was distance. Discipline was proof that love had conditions.”

The hologram showed Veyra as a young woman now.

Beautiful. Severe. Gifted.

“She was brilliant. Do not misunderstand me. She was not a mistake of talent. She was elegant, strategic, powerful in the Force, politically perceptive, and dangerous with a blade before many apprentices had learned not to cut themselves while cleaning their weapon.”

A faint, wounded pride entered his voice and vanished almost immediately.

“She could read a room faster than most officers could read a map. She could inspire loyalty with a glance. She understood beauty as a weapon before anyone taught her it.”

The image shifted again.

Veyra kneeling as apprentice before Vindex.

“She became my apprentice.”

His eyes did not leave the projection.

“I believed I could guide her. I believed my doctrine could save her from the chaos that had shaped her. Power, tempered by Discipline.”

The projector flickered.

Veyra’s white armor appeared.

Darth Ravish.

A grown Chiss woman in radiant white ceremonial armor, black hair falling around her shoulders, crimson eyes luminous and serene. Wing-like plates framed her shoulders like folded feathers.

She looked angelic.

And simultaneously demonic.

Vindex’s expression hardened, but something in him seemed to withdraw from the sight.

“She heard another lesson.”

His voice was low.

“Power earns devotion. Discipline hides pain. Love is a commodity.”

The hologram expanded, showing fragments from intercepted reports: kneeling followers, white-lit corridors, sealed chambers, bounty hunter transfers, Ziost coordinates, a sleek white-and-black Sith cruiser marked in crimson.

Emma finally spoke from the hall.

“Darth Ravish currently operates from a hidden stronghold on Ziost. Designation: the White Sepulcher. Old Sith ruin complex, frozen catacomb architecture, modernized security under the stone. Charming, if your taste runs toward ceremonial dread and poor ventilation.”

The image shifted to a warship.

“Her command ship is the Seraph’s Edict. White-and-black Sith cruiser, silver trim, crimson interior lighting, chapel-like command architecture. Mobile court, warship, cult symbol, and dreadfully melodramatic.”

Another file opened: armored figures, helmets, weapons, bounty markers.

“She also employs bounty hunters. Trackers, kidnappers, deniable assassins, intimidation crews. She does not trust them. She seduces them. She uses them. Indoctrinates them, often with her body. Understanding that may become relevant if you enjoy staying alive.”

Vindex’s eyes remained fixed on Ravish’s image. He speaks.

“Reports indicate purges of officers for impure loyalty. Imperial citizens and Chiss subjects abducted, tested, or forced into service. Followers kneeling before her as purified Sith authority. My doctrine rewritten into cultic devotion.”

The last words came harder.

“She has made worship out of discipline.”

Ravish’s holographic face turned slowly in the projection, serene and impossibly beautiful.

“She is not entirely wrong to despise the Sith as they are. That is what makes her dangerous. A lie with no truth in it dies quickly. Ravish takes true things and bends them until they bleed the color of blood she has chosen.”

He looks back at you.

“She sees decadence and calls it disease. Correct. She sees weakness hidden behind politics. Correct. She sees cruelty without purpose rotting the Empire from within. Correct.”

His voice sharpened.

“Then she uses those as an excuse to crown herself the cure.”

The projection showed Ravish standing before kneeling followers.

“She does not want obedience. Obedience is too cold. She wants devotion. Awe. Surrender. Belief. If they worship her, they cannot abandon her. If they worship her, they cannot correct her. If they worship her, she never has to ask whether she is loved.”

The chamber went silent again.

Vindex’s next words were quieter.

“I know the beast. I helped make her.”

In that moment, Darth Vindex did not look like a conqueror, or a commander, or a Sith Lord.

He looked like a father standing before the consequences of every word he had not known how to say.

“There’s more. Last night, I received a communications report. A civilian transport, Republic Shuttle 395, was evacuating refugees from the war zone on Alderaan. Ravish’s forces seized it. 4 crew members. 500 passengers....all young women. Five... hundred... ladies. Reports are that they are being held at the indoctrination camp on her fortress grounds. Apparently, this is the beginning of a new project of hers. The tip of the iceberg. Stealing and brainwashing a new generation of devoted worshipers.”

Vindex summoned the image of Darth Ravish again. He regards you, softly.

“I need you. More than ever. You are the one soul that I trust absolutely."

Emma spoke again:

"You will take a mission shuttle. Fully stocked. Independent hyperdrive. Medical bay. Cold-weather and vacuum survival gear. Slicing suite. Secure comms. Restraints. Bounty hunter recognition files. False credentials. Ziost descent maps. The latest projected route of the Seraph’s Edict. The usual things.”

Emma added, “Also snacks. Before anyone makes the mistake of calling that unnecessary, I will remind the room that starving operatives make poor decisions and dramatic Sith family crises already have enough of those.... my lord.”

Vindex did not react to the joke.

“I need you to go to Ziost,” he said. “Investigate the White Sepulcher. Find the captives. And determine whether there is anything left of Veyra Darklove that can be reached. I can't trust myself to make that decision. I'm compromised.”

His eyes fix on your eyes.

"Family is my vulnerability. You know that."

Pause.

“If she can be reclaimed, reclaim her.”

“If she can be captured, capture her.”

“If judgment requires her death, I’ll accept your word.”

Emma’s optics lowered slightly.

Vindex’s voice become stoic.

“They will tell you she is mad. That is too simple. They will tell you she is evil. That is too easy.”

He leaned in closer.

“Do not pity her so much that you excuse her. Do not love me so much that you lie to me. Do not let her beauty convince you she is clean. Do not let her pain convince you she is innocent.”

Then he looked away.

“I want the truth. I want the living preserved if they can be preserved. I want the corruption ended. One way or another, Darth Ravish must... end.”

Emma’s voice came quietly from the side.

“The shuttle is ready, mum. Launch window is open. Ziost coordinates are loaded, with three alternate approach vectors in case Ravish’s bounty hunters are feeling ambitious.”

Vindex remained seated, Ravish’s white-armored image still suspended above the projector.

For one last moment, he looked at her.

Not Darth Ravish.

Veyra.

He touched the holocron.

The hologram vanished.

“Go,” Vindex said. "Please, before I talk myself out of it."

He touches your face.

"I know that I'm asking you to shoulder my sins. But there's more at stake here than just my soul."

Your eyes lock.

"May the Force be with you."