They were all told. When the shuttle lands, the doors will open, you will exit the shuttle quickly in an orderly fashion the overseers' time is valuable do not make them wait. This is your group number, find your group number and go through the marked door. The mass of prospective acolytes breaks into chunks as people find their group numbers and go to whatever fate awaits them. Nariveth's group contains five others, three human, one Gran, and one Twi'lek. Their overseer, a shortish bored-looking man is leaning against the opposite wall. He straightens up when they enter, and sneers when he sees the composition of the group.

"Finally. Took you scum long enough."

Oh, wonderful, she's going to be fighting for her life against her peers, and she's going to get called names during it. That's exciting.

(If he's the yelly type she's going to be in a bit of trouble, she might not be able to keep herself from flinching. When her master - former master, she reminds herself - yelled, she sometimes flinched. Flinching doesn't seem recommended at the Sith academy.)

She thinks of a few things to say that would definitely get her shocked if she still had her collar on, but decides that staying silent is the best option. She takes the opportunity to try and get a better idea of the layout of the academy, and of what her peers are like. Anyone she recognizes from the shuttle?

Three-eyes and head-tails she recognizes by appearance, there were not many non-humans on the shuttle, but they had both been quiet. One of the humans was a posturer. A large fellow, scarred and full of muscle. He looks just the sort who would actually fit here. There is an observation window that looks out on the valley below. Korriban is a desert world, and the valley is filled with dust and sand. There are scattered carvings along the cliff wall, and a dark opening flanked by two statues. On top of the cliff is a massive stone building that is probably the academy proper. The overseer is speaking again.

"I don't expect any of you louse-ridden vermin to last out the week. Now listen up, because I won't repeat myself. Each of you will take one of those bags," he points to a line of six rucksacks on the wall by the door, "and enter the tomb in the valley below. Your bag contains a note with the location of your training sword. Get the sword, then get to the academy. If you survive, which I doubt any of you pathetic slaves will, find me for your next trial. Now get moving!"

The overseer walks past the group and through the door they entered by. It shuts behind him, and the one leading to the valley opens. Posturer is the first to move, quickly grabbing the first bag and jogging out the door. The Gran follows close behind him, and then the rest.

She'll let the rest of them do their - whatever it is they think they're doing. Nothing was said about time limits. She thinks she'd rather not test that too much, take it literally and go become a cave person, but that doesn't mean she absolutely must go right now into the tomb, without trying to get an understanding of the layout of the land and where her training saber might be, first. Besides, in a straight race against any of the other acolytes, she has the sneaking suspicion she'd just lose. Instead, she'll play to her strengths. Who knows what's in the tomb, and who knows what the other idiots will attract by making a huge racket. She'd rather not be in the middle of that while everything goes down and everyone's fighting for their lives.

And really, if all else fails and they die horribly, whatever killed them will be either busy eating them or slightly winded from chasing them down. Better odds for Nariveth sneaking past.

Where does her note say her training saber is, and what are the major, safe looking routes to the academy?

Written on the note is Tomb of Ajunta Pall, second floor, third reliquary. There is a sketch of a doorway with an inscription above it. This is probably the door to the third reliquary, should she need help locating it. Also in the bag, she will find:

-one (1) hand-lamp, with powerpack
-two (2) ration bars of the type referred to as "dog chews"
-one (1) water bottle, filled
-one (1) thermal blanket
-zero (0) weapons

She can't see any obvious ways up to the academy from her current vantage point. No lifts, no stairs, just a formidable cliff face. As she looks, she will see the shuttle the acolytes arrived on fly overhead and set back down at the top of the cliff.

No obvious way into the academy is bad. She would like to know exactly where to go. The ration bars, water, and thermal blanket are - well, she's glad they care about her welfare enough to give her food and water, she guesses, but it also means that she is going to be down there for a while, probably. Yay.

The lack of weapons is - maybe it means that nothing will try to kill her immediately, but she's not convinced. This is a Sith academy, they chew through volunteers quickly enough that they forcibly conscript slaves to become Sith. A career choice with the bonus of having a long lifespan, this is not.

She packs up all of her items in an organization manner that doesn't offend her sensibilities, and then into the tomb she goes, listening for sounds of combat.

It is very quiet. And dark. She's going to have a hard time navigating without her light, but it could attract danger and the powerpack won't last forever.

She'll give her eyes some time to adjust and navigate slowly while touching a wall to keep her bearings first, but if it's completely pitch black even after her eyes have adjusted, she'll switch to the light.

It occurs to her that this is a pretty good place to 'accidentally' kill a rival. That has to be on purpose.

After ten minutes of moving carefully and stretching her senses, she can just about make out the outlines of the rooms, enough to walk without running into a wall, but she'll need a light for any detailed searching. There are multiple side chambers, filled with boxes and pots and sundry containers. She comes to a place where the hallway splits into three. There is a body lying in the middle. It's warm, hasn't been dead long.

She leaves the pots and sundry containers for now, despite how curiosity niggles in the back of her mind about them. If they are actually filled with useful items, the ones here would have been looted already, and she doesn't want to risk the possibility of traps or someone catching her through her light.

And then she notices the body.

...

She should not be surprised. The death toll was obvious, going in. She'd written off her rivals (because she must think of them as rivals, now) as 'likely to die and likely to try to kill me to prevent from dying,' and has pretty thoroughly declined to make friends. Therefore, a corpse should not make her feel horrified and appalled and angry. This isn't surprising, this is just a thing that was likely to happen that did actually happen.

And yet: here she is, horrified and appalled and angry.

But the twisting feeling of horror in her stomach doesn't stop her from checking for a rucksack. Is there one? For that matter, can she make out which of her rivals is dead? Or is it someone she doesn't even know?

It's one of the two undistinguished humans from her group. No rucksack. On closer inspection, she sees that their clothing is torn, with bloody furrows underneath. It looks like they were mauled by a wild animal.

If she's listening very closely, she might hear an faint skittering noise, coming from the path to the left.

Well. Pity about the death, pity about the family that doesn't get to see their loved one again, but most of all, pity about the rucksack. The corpse is male, but it'd probably be too much to hope for that it's the asshole human that died, so she won't let herself hope. That probably leaves the twi'lek, the gran, the woman, and the asshole. Joy.

She is listening very closely, bundle of nerves that she is, and she goes very still upon hearing the skittering.

So: confirmed, there are monsters, and they do want to kill her, and they definitely can.

She stands from her corpse inspection and quietly moves towards the right. Is the skittering getting louder, i.e., is it following her?

It seems to have stopped. For now.

That's - promising. Maybe. It makes zero sense for tomb dwelling skittering things to navigate by sight, so she'll be very very quiet. And not turn her light on just yet, anyway.

But she does want to test something - she goes to the nearest non-left doorway, and sees if she's tall enough to feel above it for inscriptions.

If she stands on her toes and stretches, she can feel indents in the stone wall that seem to be roughly the same sort of shapes as the ones on her note.

That is good and bad, because she can check things in the dark, but she's not quite sure what the set of symbols that are hers are by memory. Yet. She makes a mental note of checking and memorizing when she reaches a dead end that is silent of skitters. Briefly, she considers going back to the well lit area to read it, but dismisses this as too much of a time waster. Enough time has been lost already, even if time isn't the major factor.

She picks the right-most doorway and goes through it carefully, listening for skitters and watching for lights.

No noises, no lights. It's kind of strange actually. The tomb doesn't seem to be all that large. With five- make that four other people inside, she might have expected to have heard or seen something indicating their presence. Besides that body back there.

Here is a set of stairs going upwards.

... Her note said floor two. She'd like to go into what could be presumed to be floor two prepared, and minimize backtracking as much as possible. So that means memorizing her door symbols so well she can recognize them by touch.

She silently lowers her rucksack to the floor, listening for skitters or footsteps or something.

If there are none, she unpacks her thermal blanket and lamp, slowly, keeping as quiet as she possibly can. Ready to - well, not bolt, carefully and quietly move away if she hears a skitter. Any skitters now?

Nope. It's almost like she imagined it, or something, but that would still leave an unexplained corpse. Unless she imagined that too. The tomb probably isn't messing with her head that much this quickly, but it was convenient, the way the rucksack was gone.

She does not think she imagined the skitter. She'd be willing to bet a lot of credits (... That she doesn't actually have) that the skitter was definitely real.

...

And she doesn't think she's imagining the - something. She's supposed to be Force sensitive, and Force users are supposedly really aware of their surroundings. Or something. It's not like she's met a Jedi, and she's avoided Sith any chance she's gotten. But someone must have figured out how to do the weird magic-thing without any instruction, so there must be some way to figure it out alone. In absence of anything else, she thinks she should trust her instincts. Maybe they'll keep her alive.

Her instincts say not here, too open. There are two entrances instead of one but she doesn't think she wants to be cornered, either. For a few seconds she waffles, absently mangling an edge of the thermal blanket, cursing herself for not memorizing the symbols while she was in the room with the light.

Then she packs her thermal blanket and lamp back into the rucksack and goes to the second floor.

It should be safe for her to duck into the first room she finds on the second floor and consult her note. Well, safe-ish. Better than doing it downstairs, anyhow. Put your back to a wall and hope for the best.

That is the plan, yes!

She goes to enact this plan, checking for skittering sounds before she does anything else.

Still quiet. This is either a good thing or a bad thing. Maybe it's just being stealthy after it spooked her the first time.

The pattern of symbols is fairly distinctive. Fifteen minutes' concentration should have them fixed in her mind.

She takes the time to do that, with her light on the lowest possible setting and with her thermal blanket shielding as much of the light as possible while still giving her the ability to see the symbols. She doesn't let herself relax. She jumps at shadows and pauses regularly to listen for - anything.

And then after fifteen minutes or so, she deems it memorized well enough, and checks how much power's in the powerpack for her lamp before she puts it and the thermal blanket away.

The power is about a third drained. The reliquary is probably going to be one of those rooms with all the boxes and crates. She might need the light to search with. Time to go exploring!

She has no plans to use the light until she absolutely needs to, now. She can operate in the dark.

Time to go exploring systematically and with excessive caution, after her eyes have adjusted to the darkness again. Environmental awareness comes before all else, absolute silence comes next, and then noting the layout of the place in her head comes after that.

She is systematic, she is careful, and she checks every single door for the inscription. Eventually, it'll be found.

For a value of eventually that means it's the fourth door. That was... too easy.

Oh. The room is entirely covered in containers. And they are stacked on shelves along three walls, too. There are well more than she can easily check, with the amount of light she has remaining.

Oh, dear.

That - does not bode well.

She doesn't need the light to get the containers open, so she can turn it on for a brief moment after getting each container open by touch to check for a training saber. Does that stretch out her light long enough to get her saber?

Nope. With another third of her power burned, and lots of boxes yet to go, she needs to find a new strategy.

... How does 'search by touch' go?

Slowly. She starts to feel a prickle on the back of her neck, like something is coming up behind her, but she won't see anything if she looks.

Ugh, what is with this tomb, why does she feel like she's being stalked. It's probably insane to think that she's being stalked without any evidence at all.

But she said she'd trust her instincts, so she does. She checks to make sure the room is clear of people with a quick light check, and finds it empty but for herself and the containers. Her - whatever it is is not satisfied with this answer. So, for good measure, she grabs several containers and drags them in front of the door. Just in case. And then she's locked alone in a room looking for her training saber. Again. With a third of her total power left, and running out of patience. She could keep searching by touch, she supposes, but she suspects that's not the point of the exercise, and it'll take ages regardless. So what is the point of the exercise?

... This is supposed to be about training, isn't it? On how to use the Force? Maybe she should try that. Maybe the point of this is to get her frustrated enough to try alternate methods.

She - attempts to reach out with her mind. Or something. Isn't that how it's supposed to work? She has no idea, why didn't they give her an instruction manual...

She feels like it would be a good idea to check this back corner here, this one particular box in this back corner.

Okay.

Just - go with it. Nothing to lose if it doesn't work.

She checks that one particular box in the back corner.

... that doesn't look a "training" anything. It is a sword that would not seem out of place on a battlefield, with a wickedly sharp eighty centimeter blade. But she doesn't think there's anything else in the room that could come close to fitting the description of a training saber.

And it is completely in character for Sith to give her a terrifying weapon of murder as a training blade, isn't it.

Right then, clearly this is hers, and clearly there is definitely something to her weird inexplicable feelings, so she should just assume she actually is being stalked.

She drinks some of her water and has half of a ration bar, and then takes a deep breath and - okay, weird inexplicable feelings, how does the other side of the barricaded door feel, right now?

Well, it's not like she can stay in that room forever. Now's as good a time as any to leave.

Yes but she seems to have sensory abilities so how dangerous is it immediately outside?

...she doesn't sense anything.

Either because there's nothing to be sensed or because her new-found abilities aren't actually all that reliable yet.

.... Okay.

She moves the barricade aside, and out she goes. Carefully. Sword at the ready if she needs it.

Do her new senses have anything to say about which way is out?

Sort of... that-ish way? Maybe?

WAIT SHIT THERE'S SOMETHING RIGHT BEHIND HER

TRUST THE WEIRD NEW SENSES!

Nothing friendly would sneak up on her like that right behind her she spins and slices with barely a thought because aaaaaaaa!

A strange, vaguely human-shaped creature dances out of the way of her panicked slash.

"Sword? You. You have... sword?" Its voice is harsh and guttural, like it hasn't been used properly in a long time.

"Get sword, go to academy. Must get sword."

... Oh, they don't clear this place out when the acolytes are all sorted, they just leave the failures here to terrorize new prospects, what a very Sith thing to do.

"I," she begins, backing away, and then she needs to start over again because she's having some bizarre trouble speaking all of a sudden, "I don't want to hurt you, but I will if you try to grab at me again."

The creature follows her.

"Must get sword, go to academy. Sword. Must get. Go. Academy."

The words surely they will let you in eventually, die on her lips, because of course they won't, they're Sith.

"Have you tried closing your eyes and reaching out with your, uh, weird inexplicable extra sense?"

"Must get sword."

It's getting closer now. The nails on its hands are long and sharp, and caked in blood.

"Well you can get your own," she informs it, and then she can't back up anymore because she's gone and hit a wall. When did she get that far across the room, she doesn't recall deciding to back up so far that she's on the other side of the room and running into walls, what is this, she didn't plan it, what if the skittering things show up -

This is such an absurd train of thought.

"... Did you kill the other acolyte?" she asks, because that's the next absurd train of thought and she doesn't have the mental capacity to censor herself.

"SWORD" it screeches, and lunges at her, nails outstretched.

WELP.

Sword indeed, she slashes without thinking, but with surprisingly accurate aim for a woman whose entire internal thought process now consists of incoherent screaming.

A bloody line appear across the thing's chest, and it may have lost a finger or two, but it's still coming.

Clearly the answer to this is the time honored tradition of hitting it until it dies. Or, well, stabbing it until it dies, either one.

Unlike lightsabers, vibroswords don't cauterize as they cut.

By the time the creature stops moving, Nariveth and her new blade are drenched in blood.

Well. That's. That's definitely some shiny new trauma that she has now.

She checks to make sure it's dead. Then, she loots the corpse, because what else is she supposed to do, she is obviously in danger, she doesn't have time for sentimentality or respect to something that went crazy long ago and then died. ... Well. Something that went crazy long ago and then tried to kill her and failed due to vibrosword to the face. And chest. And arms. And she maybe went a little bit too far, didn't she, she could have avoided killing it entirely if she hamstrung it and turned tail to run -

No, no, don't go down that road. It was a mercy kill in self defense, she needs to stick to that story. Not for the sake of anyone else, for herself. Her other option is to lock herself in a room for a while to have herself a freak out, but that's just not happening. She doesn't want to stay in this tomb any longer.

Does it happen to have the stolen rucksack?

It does! Upon inspection, the contents appears to be the same as what was in her own, except instead of the two (2) ration bars, there are one and a half (1.5) ration bar wrappers.

If consulted, her mysterious new sense thinks she should go that way to get out. That way doesn't seem to be leading her back to the stairs she came up.

She takes the power pack, the water, and then decides that she really doesn't want another thermal blanket and uses it to wipe her sword and face clean of blood. ... Well, her sword clean of blood, with her face it's hard to tell without a mirror, but at least she doesn't feel as awful and sticky. Which is good enough for her. The rest of her's going to have to wait until she can get access to a refresher.

Then she consults her mysterious new sense and goes the way directed, regularly prodding it for the million credit question of 'Am I about to be ambushed again?'

She's not ambushed again. It seems the lost acolyte was the primary danger the tomb had to offer. After she goes up one flight of stairs, then another, she is greeted with the sight of a gently sloping corridor ending in daylight.

Yay.

Well. Out she goes, sipping water and finishing up the unfinished half of her first ration bar. Who knows when she'll get another meal. (She keeps one hand free for her sword, just in case, and prods her new sense for input constantly.)

There's a guard at the top of the ramp. They hold up a hand to stop Nariveth, and ask "Group number?"

"Cresh-21. And I retrieved the sword and everything." Behold, sword.

The guard doesn't visibly react. There may be eyerolling behind the face-concealing helmet. They note the group on their datapad, and toss her a synthleather belt with a sheathe to hold her sword.

"Hang it over your shoulder. Don't walk around the academy with it drawn." They give directions to where she can find her overseer, and end with "You'd better hurry, you're the last one out."

Surely she couldn't have wasted that much time - but if her peers were not as safety conscious, the timeline makes sense, she was very careful about being quiet -

Ugh.

"Right. Thank you," she says, putting her sword in its sheath after checking to be sure she did clean the blood off of it properly (she did), and putting on the belt.

Off she goes, to find her overseer. She suspects she will not get to visit the refresher because she was the last one out, that just seems to be how things work here, she is likely going to be covered in blood for whatever comes next. Yay.

Meanwhile, and slightly earlier...

Lord Occlus is taking a shuttle down to the surface of Korriban. She doesn't particularly want to be, but Darth Vowrawn had suggested that taking an apprentice from the homeworld would boost her credibility. On reflection, she agreed with him. This would serve to demonstrate that she was genuinely interested in the future of the Sith, and not just some flash-in-the-pan upstart solely motivated by revenge. Not that revenge isn't a major factor in her decision to hunt, humiliate, and kill Darth Thanaton, but she does think his insistence on the traditional path regardless of the changing galaxy is hindering the Sith.

In fact, a break on Korriban might be just the thing. Thanaton is unlikely to make any further overt moves against her while she is at the academy, and it is a fine spot from which to do some further politicking with those members of the Dark Council not yet swayed one way or another. Chief among those being Darth Marr. If she can lock him in, it almost doesn't matter about any of the others. He is a dominant personality. Marr respects strength, which she has, and is fond of the Empire itself, not just as a means for his own power. That sets him apart from most others, but if she can make some important contribution to the war effort...

It really is very nice to be able to think inside her own head without constantly being interrupted and sidetracked. The Voss excursion was well worth the time she invested. But now the shuttle is landing, and she must go meet with the overseer and determine what sort of apprentice she will be saddled with. Hopefully there will be at least one capable of stringing two thoughts together, and if they have any strength at all in the Force, well. That would just be a bonus.

When Nariveth nears the room she was told her overseer would be in, she can hear him talking with a woman she does not know.

"...truly the dregs of this shipment, my lord. Slaves, and alien filth. It would be better to cast them all aside, and wait for the next arrival."

"You know I don't have the time to waste. I will trust that the trials will serve their purpose of culling the weak, and take what I can from this group."

Nariveth decides before she actually gets to her overseer that she will not slink in last. Instead, she'll own it. She doesn't regret the logic behind her choices, though they could have been executed a bit better, and she won't act like she's failed. Because she hasn't.

So that is how she walks up, looking perfectly composed, covered in blood but otherwise unharmed. She glances at the Sith Lord, assumes that this is the Sith that'll be taking one of them as an apprentice, and consciously represses a flinch reaction. (Though a proper Force user could probably notice the flare of fear. It doesn't show on her face, but yep, that's some fear.)

She doesn't interrupt their conversation; instead, she'll wait patiently with her hands clasped behind her back, waiting to be addressed. Her bet: the overseer is about to call her some nasty names and call her pathetic. And she is not going to react to a single one of them.

Both look over to her when she enters. The overseer speaks first.

"You're not dead, then? Pity. The others have already started the next trial, you'd best run to catch up, slave."

Occlus holds up her hand.

"Wait just a moment, overseer."

To Nariveth, "What took you so much time in the tomb?"

... She has to talk to a Sith Lord. Directly.

Nariveth swallows the automatic fear response of 'Nothing my lord' and raises her eyes to meet Occlus's.

"He didn't set a time limit, and my own survival matters more to me than his approval. I assumed dangerous things lurked in the tomb and conducted myself as such." She glances dryly down at herself, then back up to look at Occlus. "I was correct."

Faint smile. This one's a thinker.

"Are you literate?"

She smiles a little, encouraged despite the terror.

"Yes, my lord."

"Good."

Occlus turns back to the overseer. "This one will not be participating in the second trial. I am taking her to the library with me, instead. You may have her back tomorrow."

The overseers splutters. "My lord-! You can't just-"

"Can I not? Be very sure of your answer, overseer."

He bows his head in submission. "As you decree, my lord."

Occlus walks to the door and beckons Nariveth. "Come, acolyte." They start down the corridor.

That was the most glorious and terrifying thing she has ever witnessed.

It'll be beaten later, she assumes, if she lives, but holy crap she just skipped a trial and won the Sith Lord's approval aaaaa.

She follows Occlus, and debates internally over if it would be overstepping her bounds to ask to use the refresher before library time. While she does this, she is completely silent.

"We will stop first at your quarters. Arriving late as you did, you will not have had a chance. You may pick up a change of clothes and wash some of that blood off. Man or beast, by the way?"

"... Thank you, my lord. Man, technically, though it was more beast by the time it decided to attack me."

"Yes, that sort of insanity can happen with prolonged exposure to areas of intense dark side power. While I applaud your caution, in the future you may wish to spend less time in the tombs."

Walk walk. Occlus knows where she's going.

Blink. "I was not aware that the tombs had such effects, that - thank you my lord, I will take that into consideration the next time I'm in one of the tombs."

She'll just follow Occlus! That is fine by her.

"Here we are. I advise you not to leave anything here that you want to keep. The 'fresher is next door, take you time."

Acolytes get barracks-style quarters, twenty to a room. At the foot of each bed is a small trunk. Nariveth will find in two sets of robes in hers.

Occlus leans against the wall, pulls out her datapad, and starts making refinements to her plans for the unaligned Dark Councilors.

"Yes, my lord," she says, bowing a little. "Thank you."

And then it is systematic get-ready-to-go as quickly and orderly as possible. She gets the blood off first, and considers what she will and will not keep while scrubbing, then gets into the (black) robes and systematically sorts her crap into things she'll keep and things she won't. She transfers the power in her near empty power pack to the second one she got, and leaves the now almost completely empty one in the trunk. Bait, if someone's stupid enough to fall for it. Let them think they're taking something important from her. The now-full one is hers. The other set of robes, her two canteens (both topped off with water from the refresher), thermal blanket, lamp and ration bar go into the rucksack to come with her, aggressively organized to conserve as much space as possible. Her bloodstained clothes can just. Stay in the trunk, as well.

That's all of her belongings taken care of. ... Somewhat depressingly, it's actually the most things she's owned at one time in her life.

"My lord?" she says, when she's ready to go.

"One moment." Occlus finishes typing something, and tucks her datapad away again. "This way," she says and walks off.

"I am not necessarily doing you a favor, by bringing you with me. The overseer resents my interference, and will take this out on you. To the other acolytes, you having my personal attention so early will mark you as a higher priority threat than you might otherwise be. Prepare yourself for this."

Nariveth follows!

She already knew that she'd be a huge target because of this, but it's nice of the Sith Lord to go and tell her. Which reminds her: new senses, tell her more stuff, she can multitask. Can she tell what her rivals are up to? Or something?

"I understand," she says. She considers, and then decides that if being herself has gotten her favored, she should - do that some more. "... May I ask for advice how to prepare?"

She's not that good yet. And she barely knows who her rivals are. Maybe if she pays attention to them when the come back from whatever trial the overseer has them doing, she'll be better able to track them.

"You may."

Is that a smirk? No, obviously not. Even though Occlus is in a good mood because it's still quiet and she's found someone who thinks. Such a thing would be beneath her dignity as a Sith lord.

A literal Sith Lord, will wonders never cease.

"What advice can you offer me on how to prepare?"

Pity about not being able to sense her rivals yet. ... She is not quite brave enough to try to look at Occlus with the Force, but she's brave enough to try sensing the area and layout around them. Can she do that?

If she tries to look at the area around herself, she's going to get at least a glimpse of Occlus's presence. Occlus has a distinctive and distracting signature, the Force swirls around her in a way that (Nariveth may not realize) it does for no one else, like a rock in a stream creating a wake that is much more chaotic than one would predict for a rock of that size. She might get a vague sense of how big the rooms they pass are, how many people are there, and if she concentrates, a sense of their strength.

"I am going to the library to find information on a form of dueling called the kaggath. The library also contains several texts that a new Force-user may find helpful in learning how to harness their power. I expect you to fetch the books I tell you, but not to aid me in reading them. This may lead to periods of idleness for you."

... Nariveth smiles.

"I see. Thank you, my lord."

Also: Occlus is terrifying. Meep. Focus on the not-Occlus, sense room size and people inside and she can start trying to see their strength. Being able to ignore distracting things is also important.

Occlus is very distracting, but Nariveth can learn to mostly not-see her. The academy is not infinite in size, so she doesn't have time to get very far on anything else before they arrive.

"I require these titles to start," Occlus names a list of five. "They should all be in that section there. If you need assistance, ask one of the library droids. I will be at this table." She sits.

That's okay, it's a thing to work on later.

Nariveth nods, and goes to fetch the appropriate titles from the appropriate section. Are they easy to find if she has basic skills of logic?

Yes. This library is maintained by droids, after all.

After Occlus gets her books, she has no further need of Nariveth for a while.

Nariveth questions the droids for books for a new Force-user's education. Anything good?

Here's one on the Sith Code, here's one on mind tricks, here's one about the theory behind Force-enhanced acrobatics, this one on perception and visions is a little more advanced but she seems to be leaning in that direction.

... She grabs all of them, and then sits with her books in a place where she can easily be called upon by Occlus should she be needed for book retrieval, because just because she is excited about education doesn't mean she's going to keep a Sith waiting.

She skims the basics of the one on acrobatics, because she thinks she needs something if things turn to direct confrontation. What can potentially be done?

The Force is an energy field generated by living beings. When you move, it moves with you. The trick is to feel how it moves with you, then harness that to create more motion. When you jump, don't just push with your legs, push with the Force that is moving around your legs.

That is promising.

She thinks she needs to get a good overview that she can try out on her own while on a trial, though - so, mind tricks?

The Force can have a strong influence on the weak-minded. Take your version of reality, and push it at them. If your will is strong enough, you can overwrite their beliefs or intentions and substitute your own.

... Creepy. She'll take it over 'literally killing someone,' but. She'd rather not.

Okay, she thinks the perception and vision one will take her longer to digest, so - what does the, ugh, Sith Code say?

Peace is a lie, there is only passion. Through passion, strength. Through strength, power. Through power, victory. Through victory, freedom.

There's a lot of propagandistic philosophy, but it seems that by holding strong emotions in the front of your mind, you can summon more power more easily. There are several meditation guidelines suggested to help new initiates understand the principles.

And Occlus requires a few more books. They are straightforward to locate.

Nariveth fetches more books upon being asked, without delay. One does not keep a Sith Lord waiting, even when one is surrounded by fascinating books about the Force.

But then the books are retrieved, and she believes she has her own book to read. Perception! C'mere, you delightfully advanced book, you, Nariveth wants to learn your secrets!

Most Force-users have a basic danger sense and a very good grasp of what is happening immediately around them, in their personal space. Some have a knack for expanding their personal space to a very great radius. There is a story of a Sith who was the absolute ruler of a small city who used this to keep iron control of his subjects' every move. Even more rarely, a few Sith can extend their "personal space" through time as well, and receive visions of future events that directly affect them. These are generally more focused and more reliable than other visions received in the course of more ordinary meditation.

... Want.

Okay, but future-sight sounds rare enough that she likely won't be able to get it during the course of the trials, so she needs to go after more immediate aids. She's already expanding her senses, mind control is unpalatable, and she's not sure she wants to read more Sith propaganda, so she'll go read about acrobatics and enhancing her body with the Force.

She can read enough to get a solid foundation in the theory, but with something like this there's only so much theory can do before you really have go apply it.

As she reaches that point,

Occlus calls her over to return all the books.

"It is time we left."

Nnnnnnnnh but the books.

But she suspects Occlus has a reason for this suspiciously convenient timing, so she nods and returns all books to their proper locations and then will follow Occlus out.

"I trust you spent your time productively?"

Nariveth nods. "I tried to get basics on lots of things so I could practice them in my own time. Thank you, my lord."

"I would find it inconvenient if you died. Try not to."

"Rest assured," says Nariveth, "I'll try my very best."

"Good. The cafeteria is down this hall, they will be expecting you for dinner."

Occlus has other dinner plans. They involve a potential ally with a fondness for Bakuran cloudberries.

Nod.

"Thank you, my lord."

And then, to the cafeteria! Attempting to sense things as she goes.

There is probably definitely a whole lot of angry/anxious/worried low-ish strength people in that big room there!

People are mostly sitting alone, there are a few small clumps, but not many. The food line is over there, two scoops of green gloop one scoop of grey gloop per person, put your trays here when you're done.

Posture guy is sitting with his back to a wall. When he notices Nariveth's entrance, his eyes narrow. She can sense much anger from him, directed at her. Probably not a good idea to sit near him.

She definitely won't sit anywhere within arm's reach of him, that's for sure. And she'll have to keep an eye on him, with that anger. But then, she'll have to keep an eye on all of her rivals, won't she.

Sitting in the middle of the room is better, she thinks. It'll let her sense everyone around her, and really, she's confident that she can notice if someone's sneaking up on her. She gets her three scoops of gloop and sits. The food is less palatable than it looks, but she's ignoring it in favor of trying to pick out her rivals from the crowd, trying to see if anyone's likely to try to hurt her. Posture guy's easy, she'll be keeping an eye on him, but what about the Twi'lek? The Gran? ... She doubts she could recognize the last, the other human, by sight, but maybe she can pick her out through the anger.

The Gran is by himself, chewing industriously. He either hasn't noticed her or doesn't care. That girl sitting by the Twi'lek is probably the one from Nariveth's group, judging by the way they're huddled together talking in low tones and every so often shooting brief glances at her.

That's interesting. Also somewhat worrying. They seem like they'd be more dangerous than the idiot that postures, because she might not be able to see them coming. Well, might not if she wasn't staying on top of things.

Can she sense their emotions?

It's hard to tell. They're not quite like anyone else in the cafeteria, nor anyone else she can remember from walking through the academy. They're almost more focused on each other than they are on her...

Wait a second.

Are they in love?

That... would fit, wouldn't it. Huh. Unexpected.

The cold, calculating part of her notes that this is a potential opportunity, and the less cold calculating part of her tells that part to sit down and shut up, she will not let the Sith get awful Sithy emotions all over her, thank you very much. What would she like to do? ... Get them off planet, clearly. If it isn't too risky to herself. It might be too risky to herself. If there was an obvious way to get off planet, she can't imagine that slaves get much chance to get off planet. But it's better than treating them as pawns, she thinks.

Her life is now complicated, that's great. Fantastic, even.

She'll have to be on the lookout for what the shuttle arrangements are like. The ship that brought her here docked at an orbital platform and she was transferred to a shuttle for the actual descent. There probably aren't any interstellar ships docked groundside. But the food has to come from somewhere, right? Korriban is not exactly an environment conducive to agriculture. That means deliveries. Unless there are hydroponics somewhere she hasn't seen yet.

There's a thing to think about. She'll watch out for that, and for what happens to acolytes that fail besides 'die.' She doesn't expect it to be good, but she might as well understand the situation as much as possible.

It's tempting to try and talk to the duo, but - no, they won't trust her, and it would let on that she's figuring out her Force sensitivity in the area built towards sensing things. While they may be in love, that doesn't mean they won't, say, kill her to try and get a better chance with each other. Or to live. Much as she wants to go, 'Hey! I'm nice, I want to help!' this really isn't the place for it.

She eats her goop, pensively. Can she stretch out her senses to far enough to see a landing pad or two from here?

Academy, academy, academy... nope. No landing pad. Maybe if she knew what direction to stretch, but she can't just expand her radius far enough.

There is an announcement over the intercom. "Lights out in twenty minutes." Acolytes start putting their trays back and moving towards the door. She should probably head back to her bunk soon.

Yes, she should. She finishes her goop, puts up her tray, and checks to see if Posturer is near the door or in some sort of way that he might cause her trouble as she goes to the barracks.

He's already gone.

He's probably assigned to the same barracks she is.

Probably.

What are the odds that he's doing something horrible to her bunk? Or at the very least, looking through whatever things she left there.

Well, off she goes, checking for her rivals or anyone that's paying her too much attention as she walks.

Her trip is uneventful. Nothing's happened to her bunk, but he walks over to her after she gets to it.

"You," he says. His voice is deep and gravelly. "Are supposed to be dead." Looming. The thing he is doing is accurately described as looming.

"Am I? I must have missed the memo," says Nariveth, smoothly.

"You were not at the second trial. Why."

"And why," she says, thinking of her first master's wife and channeling the haughtiness she projected, "should I tell you that?"

"Because I have asked."

Loooooom.

He's taller than she is, and stronger, and - well, lots of things, but she's faced down scary people before. She just spent a span of time in the presence of a Sith Lord. She can do this.

"Let me think..." She taps her chin, and smiles. "No."

"You will regret this," he promises, but turns to go.

Nariveth just smiles.

No she won't.

How's his emotional state doing? How angry is he?

He's frustrated. Usually the looming thing works better for him.

The lights go out.

Thanks to Force sensitivity, she doesn't have any trouble with navigating to her bunk in absolute darkness. The outer layers of her robes come off and are neatly folded and stored under her bunk next to her boots, and then she decides to use her rucksack as a pillow with a bit of rearrangement to get the cloth parts under her head for comfort.

And then she has a debate over practicing with the Force some more versus getting some actual sleep, decides that it's incredibly likely that they will turn the lights on very early, and therefore she needs to get her sleep where she can.

She spends a few minutes checking the area around her in a paranoid fashion, but if nothing tries to bother her, she'll be asleep within half an hour.

Nothing bothers her.

As predicted, the lights do come on early. The intercom buzzes again. "All acolytes are to report to their overseers."

Up she gets. On go her outer robes and boots, and then she watches via the Force for where her fellows are going to know where exactly they are to meet their overseer. Because no one's told her that, if it's a different meeting place than last time.

After a short time, it becomes apparent they're going to the same spot as yesterday.

The overseer is wearing the same scowl as yesterday. "Your assignment today, worms, is to retrieve a copy of the carvings on the wall of the Machine Vault in the Tomb of Tulak Hord. You have until sundown. Get out of my sight."

... Okay.

So, first off: she'll need materials with which to get a copy of the carvings. Is there a place where she can solicit a datapad?

...she knows where the library is. It's a place to start, at least. The library should have a map of the area, as well.

To the library!

Map? Datapad? (Do not get distracted by the books you can read the books after flying through this trial.)

The droids can easily point her to a map, but the concept of a loaner datapad seems to confuse them.

There's a familiar face at one of the tables.

She gets a copy of the map, notes the correct room, then looks at Occlus in consideration, debating whether or not to ask her for help.

Actually - no. She thinks she won't. This isn't the hard part of the task, if all else fails she's quite sure she can draw something out in blood on her thermal blanket. She doesn't want to, but she could do it if it came to that. And she'd rather not overstay her welcome with the Sith Lord, or coast on her coat tails and get herself killed because she was relying on someone else exclusively. Even if it did work, it'd probably get the overseer and her peers upset with her.

Hm. What's her competition up to? Can she tell from here?

They seem to be clustered a few corridors over and down.

... What, all together?

Clearly she must go investigate. Subtly. What are they doing there? She'd like to know before she's in sight.

They're not killing each other, but she doesn't have the control yet to get fine detail.

When she gets there, she finds a room with wax tablets and styli. The others must have been told about it while she was absent.

Hello, favoritism. How are you today.

Whatever, she has a map. She's calling it even.

Well, hand drawing out a carving on a wax tablet with a stylus sounds incredibly annoying and like it'll take a while. ... Can she just get a wax tablet big enough to press against the carving and then remove? She doesn't care if she defaces some dead Sith Lord's tomb a bit.

There's a few that are probably big enough, but it might be tricky to carry all that way.

Hmmmmmm.

She surmises she can rig up a thing to carry the tablet with her thermal blanket, debates speed on getting this done versus using up her last ration bar, and then goes to see if she can scarf down a single helping of gloop before running off to accomplish this mission.

There's gloop available, but the cafeteria is almost deserted. The other acolytes emanate despair. These are the ones who know they're not going to be the survivor.

Poor things. But she can't help, she's too busy saving herself.

She scarfs down her single scoop of gloop for the calories, and then returns to get the largest wax tablet available, spends a little while rigging up a way to more easily carry it using her thermal blanket, grabs a stylus just in case her plan doesn't work, and then it's off to the tombs.

Where's her competition?

Well on their way. She had better get a move on.

She might find a shortcut that'll make up some time by consulting the map.

She consults the map!

Is there a shortcut?

There's a hidden staircase that comes out near where she needs to go. Follow the clifftop down that way.

She follows the clifftop down that way, smiling a little.

While walking, she tries to poke at her Force abilities; she turns them inward, to see if she can figure out how to enhance her body like the acrobatics book said. Every now and then she checks to see that no one's near her, and for updates on her rivals' progress.

She can get brief bursts of Force-enhanced speed, with a bit of trial and error. The path is deserted, and she seems to be gaining on her rivals.

Ooo! Ooo! Force-enhanced speed! Force-enhanced speed!

She is really excited about this and practices it, though she won't use it to exhaustion if it looks like it tires her out too quickly.

And of course, she minds where she aims while using it. She is near a cliff.

Eventually she gets to the stairs. They're pretty steep, and there is a distinct lack of handrails.

Now would be a good time to work on that sense of balance. Force powers, activate!

Force powers, activate, indeed!

She is going to be very careful with the stairs.

One step at a time, that's the way.

She makes it to the bottom safely. No sign of the others, just another forbiddingly dark tomb entrance. What fresh horrors await her here?

She'll just have to check with her Force powers before she goes in, won't she?

Anything obviously dangerous that she can sense?

Vague intimations of lurking danger deep within. Nothing close to the entrance.

Caution's going to have to be the word of the day.

She goes over the layout of the place again before entering, so she can be sure she gets the right room, and then after deeming it suitably memorized, in she creeps.

She gets about halfway to her destination when she comes across a large chamber which a pack of tuk'ata seem to have made their nest in. There's no way to route around. Only about half the pack are home, five or six dogs.

Well. That's a problem.

...

She read about mind tricking people, but there's no reason it wouldn't work on animals to, is there? Can she pick out one that's furthest from the others, push the idea of an interesting sound coming from that way? In a direction she doesn't need to go? With significant willpower behind it.

The animal perks its head up, but doesn't seem inclined to get up and move.

C'mon, she can do this, they're surely not very smart, she cannot be out-willpowered by some tuk'ata.

She pushes again, stronger this time, a bit annoyed.

Curious whine. Sloooowly streeeetch and stand.

Interesting sound! Interesting smell! That way! C'mon, tuk'ata, it's fascinating in that place over there, go look!

It trots off. Four more to go.

She can do this. Shove, next tuk'ata, go join your friend, follow the pack mentality, interesting smell and sound thing over there go hunt it down with your pack!

The rest of the pack sits up, and after a bit of grumbling among themselves, follow after the first dog. The room is clear.

Through it she goes, speeding herself up with the Force. They'll likely catch her scent when they come back, that'll be fun, but she thinks she can redirect them to another part of the tomb again. If not, well. She can probably outrun them. Or shove fear at them, that could also work, but it seems a bit mean for her tastes.

Is there anything between her and the carvings?

There is not! And the relevant section seems to be just a bit smaller than her tablet, and deep enough that she should be able to take a pressing of it.

Excellent. Excellent.

She presses her tablet into the carving, checks to make sure all relevant parts of the carving are present in the pressing with a quick use of her lamp, deems it accurate enough for her purposes, and she puts it back in her thermal blanket carrying sling.

How are the tuk'ata doing? Following her scent, perhaps?

There seem to... she thinks two, nosing their way up her trail.

Well! Tuk'ata, the trail went that way, into that chamber over there!

That gets rid of one. The other is not so easily dissuaded.

Nariveth growls a little. She will not be defeated by some mangy mutts.

Your prey is in that room, follow your pack mate, you will eat well tonight.

There he goes!

That door looks heavy. Probably more than enough to trap them, if she can move it.

She hesitates, briefly, because 'starving to death trapped in a room' is really not a great way to go, even if they're just animals -

But then, neither is 'eaten by a pack of tuk'ata.'

She rushes to the door to close it on them.

Oof, that is heavy. What's this thing made of, stone? (Yes.)

The dogs turn to look at her.

...

Enhanced strength! Enhanced strength! ENHANCE THE DAMN STRENGTH CLOSE IT CLOSE IT CLOSE IT!

The door crashes home.

That maaay not have been the best idea. She senses the other three tuk'ata approaching, alerted by the noise.

Well, two down, at least.

She takes a deep breath, recalls the bit in the Sith Code book about strong emotions enhancing Force abilities, and promptly channels all of her panic at the possibility of being eaten alive and anger at how completely unfair this is and fear of possibly being eaten alive and pushes fear.

She is the scariest damn thing in this tomb and the tuk'ata had damn well better run!

Unfortunately for her, the tuk'ata fear response involves a panicked attack. So now the dogs are running at her. There may be some slavering going on in the jaw region.

... Well, fuck.

Out comes the sword. She removes her wax tablet sling, putting it down and stepping away, because she thinks she can't get out of this fight, now.

What else can she do, she's feeling lots of emotion right now, surely she can channel it into something -

Speed.

How closely are they packed together?

Pretty closely, the hallway is not terribly wide and they're broad across the shoulder. They're approaching leap range right about...

now. The first jumps at her, jaws stretched wide for the bite.

Nariveth stabs it mid-leap, trying to move out of the way of the path of its leap. She has the reflexes for it, surely?

Almost but not quite. Her stab is on target, but the dog clips her on its way down, knocking her off balance. The other two are coming in rapidly.

Great, great, wonderful, what else can she do, she can sense things and shove at emotions and enhance herself and she can back the fuck up, that's a fantastic idea, give her more time to think -

...

TUK'ATA, YOUR PACKMATE IS THE ENEMY!

The one on the left turns and sinks its teeth deep into the other one's flank. It howls in pain, and fights back.

Good news, she's no longer in imminent danger. Bad news, there's not enough room to get around that dogfight.

She'll just wait for it to end, that's fine by her. She can pick off the survivor, easy.

After a furious two minutes, the fight is over. The survivor limps to the side, bleeding heavily, and collapses.

Nariveth feels a pang of guilt, because this has all been horrible and she's very sorry for causing this much of a mess, but she steps to the survivor, holds her blade above its head, and stabs neatly into its skull. Might as well make this quick. Be merciful.

And then she retrieves her tablet and its sling, and stalks out of the tomb. Any more tuk'ata? Or, for that matter, have the other acolytes shown up?

She passes the Gran going the other way through the nest chamber. He gives her a wide berth.

The Twi'lek and the human girl are near the entrance when she gets there. They eye her mistrustfully, but don't move to attack.

She's pretty fine with the Gran giving her a wide berth.

She pauses at the Twi'lek and human girl, and then says, "... Watch out for the rest of the pack, that looked to be about half of them. The others might show up while you're in there."

Their response to this gesture is just to glower harder. They know she has no reason to help them.

She sighs.

"And mind the other human. He's probably going to show up at the end and try to steal your tablet."

And then she walks off.

Glower.

High road or low road on the way back?

... She does not want to go up those stairs while tired and emotionally exhausted.

Low road.

Posture guy is lurking in those shadows up ahead. He gets in her way.

"Give me your tablet." Looooom.

She looks incredibly unimpressed with him.

"I just took out half a pack of tuk'ata by myself and am completely unharmed." Pause. "Fuck off."

"I don't believe you."

"You can feel free to check."

He unsheathes his sword.

"I won't tell you again, girl."

... Nariveth giggles a little. It is not a nice giggle.

Once, she witnessed a Sith creating lightning from their fingertips.

She holds out her hand, and channels some hatred.

Power surges, and arcs crackling through the air. The lightning strikes Posture, and his whole body seizes. He drops to the ground and screams in pain. Sparks play across his torso while he writhes in agony.

She inhales sharply and stops when he's down. Something in the back of her head notes that this is a very bad thing for her to have done, and she drops her hand.

But she's still angry, and it's so tempting to shock him again, or just be done with him and kill him.

Instead, she leans down and repeats, "Fuck off."

And then she keeps walking. She can freak out after the tablet has been handed to the overseer. She will not freak out until after she has handed in the tablet. Breathe. Breathe. Do not think about how much you would so like to kill him. Keep walking. Breathe.

He gets his breath back before she's gone too far.

"You fucking bitch!" he shouts. "I'll kill you! I will rip your heart out and feed it to you! Do you hear me! I! Will! Kill! You!"

She doesn't turn around. She doesn't shock him again. She doesn't snarl that he's not as scary as he thinks he is. She doesn't let herself turn around and take out her bad day on him.

She keeps walking.

Breathe. Breathe.

He doesn't follow. Either because he can't stand yet, or he's not actually that eager to fight her again.

There's the academy up ahead. It looks like there's an elevator up now.

Well, she can just take the elevator up, now can't she?

She's probably earned that much. Does she want to go turn in her tablet now, or wait til later?

Now. She wants to turn it in now.

The overseer is waiting in his office.

"Back already? Do you want me to just put you out of my misery, slave?"

... She wordlessly deposits her tablet on his table with a loud thunk.

And then she smiles.

"No."

The overseer looks down at the tablet, then back up at her. A vein twitches in his temple.

"Get out."

"Are there any other trials today?" she asks.

"Just. Leave."

"Slave."

"Are there. Any other. Trials today?"

"No." His teeth are audibly grinding.

"Thank you."

And out she gets.

Okay. Step one: refresher, she's having a proper shower, and she will wash her hair. She will get into a new set of nice clean robes. She is going to rebraid her hair afterwards, so it's out of her way for when the Sith want her to go get into some more peril. Then she is going to go to the cafeteria and eat three scoops of gloop, because she will likely need the calories, and she should not eat her rat bar in a fit of angst just because it's easy. And then she is going to find some place very very quiet where she's not likely to be found or disturbed, and she is going to freak out.

Does anything impede her in all steps up to the freak out?

Nothing up until the finding a quiet place part. The academy is somewhat busy, and she'll have to hunt for a while to find an unused room with a door she can lock.

She can be very, very stubborn when she wants something very, very badly.

Then she will eventually find a room that suits her needs.

In she goes, locking the door behind her.

She picks the corner furthest away from the door, and she sits.

She wonders if she's supposed to cry. She doesn't feel like it. Mostly she just feels angry, at this entire insane system, at how it makes people glower at her when she's trying to help them or how it rewards idiots like that posturing imbecile or how it makes her set animals on each other and watch them kill each other. How it drives lost acolytes mad in the tombs of long dead Sith Lords and how it makes others lose hope entirely, despairing in the cafeteria because nothing about this is fair. How she is surrounded by people and yet completely, utterly alone, and how they're trying to twist her in to something she doesn't want to be.

...

Now she feels like crying.

She does, silently.

She's going to burn this entire fucking academy to the ground one day.

But she will not be what they want her to be. She's going to live, and - probably do some more awful things, realistically, but she will not let them break her. She is not lost. She will not submit. She's going to live, and then when Lord Occlus has her as an apprentice and she has more space to work she is going to slip away on a ship the first chance she gets and flee to the Outer Rim. It will be okay.

She's going to be here a little while assuring herself of that.

Occlus is naturally keeping an eye on her favored candidate. When she senses the emotional distress Nariveth is in, she goes looking for her.

The door softly clicks open, and Occlus enters. She's not the best at comfort, but she does not want to lose this one.

"Would you like to talk?"

Nariveth is utterly shocked to see her. She stares, blinking.

"... I. Maybe? I'm. I'll be okay," she assures.

"Good. The trials are intended to push acolytes beyond their limits, to force them to become strong or perish. You will do things you never imagined that you could. But you will do nothing you were not already capable of. Do not lose yourself to self-doubt."

"That. Wasn't really my problem," says Nariveth, softly.

"What was?"

"I," she begins, and then she stops. She has no idea how to explain this. "I don't know how to succinctly explain, it's.... Okay, I did that last trial, um, beautifully, all on my own. Some - issues with not getting everything perfect, but honestly, when you're dealing with fancy new powers and are under a lot of pressure in a, a death competition that is sort of to be expected. I still walked into the tomb before anyone else, took out half a pack of tuk'ata on my own without taking a scratch, walked out, finished, as everyone else was walking in, and then for good measure when the big idiot thought he could bully me I fried him with lightning." Pause. "I mean I won't sit on my laurels and say that clearly I will win now because I was just that awesome, I'm not an idiot, that'd be crazy, but. I. I don't like feeling like I'm being manipulated, and I feel very much like this academy is manipulating me. If I become something, I want it to be because I chose to become that, not because I was dumped in an academy and put in a death competition and told to be a Sith or die."

"You want to be master of your own destiny. Not only the end, but the beginning as well."

Occlus can sympathize with that.

"Essentially. And I think I'll turn out exactly how I intend to anyway, but that doesn't mean I don't want to burn this place to the ground in retaliation just to be sure."

Oh yes, she likes this one.

"Continue as you have begun, and you may yet see that desire fulfilled. Remember, you cannot always control your situation, but you can always control your response. Succeed in this contest, but do so on your own terms. I am very much looking forward to seeing what you become."

Nariveth nods, smiling a little.

"Thanks." That wasn't quite the whole story, somehow she suspects that Occlus would look at her blankly if she ranted about how this academy is a grievous and senseless waste of lives and resources, but it was enough of it that the Outer Rim's looking less tempting.

"I will be okay, just. Needed to freak out a little. ... This helped. Thank you."

Smile.

"Good. I have high hopes of you, Nariveth. I trust you will not disappoint." And with that Occlus departs, as quietly as she arrived.

Nariveth is sort of weirded out by how she's getting used to the Sith Lord. ... How she's starting to like the Sith Lord.

She takes a little while longer to compose herself, darts to a refresher to wash her face, and then it's back to work.

She has a landing pad to look for.

There's nothing out front, she remembers that much from her trip to the Machine Vault today. Where else is there likely to be a pad? The roof or in the back are the two mostly likely places. She could also start at the kitchens, under the assumption that the food is shipped in from offworld and therefore there will be a landing pad relatively close.

Hmmm, kitchens seems her best bet for backtracking, she goes there first.

Kitchens, kitchens, where are you hiding? Cafeteria is here, look around a bit, oh here they are.

Staffed entirely by slaves, unsurprisingly. No one is willing to look at Nariveth when she enters.

The door on the far side is probably her best bet.

... She is mildly surprised by being scary. She certainly doesn't see herself as scary, and three days ago, she could have easily traded places with any one of them. But then, three days ago she would have thought she'd just be dead instead of the most promising candidate in her group, getting out of each trial physically unscathed and personally favored by the Sith Lord looking for an apprentice.

So it's probably just as well.

She goes to the door on the far side.

It leads to a pantry, and then there's another door on the far side. This one leads outside to a shuttle pad.

It's guarded quite heavily, for such a small space. Let's see, one, two... five, in total. Annnnd one of them is coming over to her.

"Acolytes are not permitted. Leave, now."

"Certainly," she agrees, and out she goes.

So she knows where that is.

Is there a place near the pantry door that is not actually in the pantry or the kitchens, where she can sense this place and try to figure out weaknesses?

No, that seems to be the only close approach.

How distressingly well designed of them.

Can she extend her range far enough to sense it?

She can sit in the cafeteria and pretend to eat for a while. If she does, she'll find that the guards seem dishearteningly intent on their duty. It would probably be very hard to distract or trick them.

She can eat some more, that's fine. She'll eat slowly.

What about alternate methods of getting onto the platform?

Nothing easy. The designers were well aware not everyone attending would be doing so willingly. Not even any upper story windows to climb down from.

What about cliff faces to climb up from? Or a way to get there from the roof?

It's surrounded on three sides by the academy, and a featureless desert plain makes the fourth. She would be seen coming from kilometers away if she tried that approach. The academy walls are sheer and offer no handholds. She can't tell if there is anything to anchor a rope from on the roof.

That seems - unwise. This feels too well planned out to her to be usable as an escape route by a pair of acolytes on another acolyte's instruction.

Let's look for other landing pads.

Well, the kitchen investigation lead her to the back, so that just leaves the roof. Time to find some stairs.

She bets she can find some stairs! Let's find some stairs!

Oh look, here's some stairs! And there's even more stairs at the top of the stairs! What luck!

But once she's on the top floor, there doesn't seem to be a door leading to the roof.

What about large windows?

All front-facing, solid transparisteel. Not hinged.

She's just going to go out on a limb and say she can't break that with her sword.

She'll instead wander the top floor, looking for landing pads through the Force.

She doesn't sense any.

...Given the lack of doors, this is not really a surprise in retrospect.

No, but this is a good place to find landing pads that other doors could possibly lead to.

Okay, so. Well guarded landing platform is the only one she knows about and can easily find out, she'll have to start keeping an eye on it for potential holes in the defense.

Can she be in the library and still sense the landing platform?

It'll be a little hard to concentrate on her reading, but yes.

She's got a good sense of time, she can regularly stop reading to sense what's going on at the landing pad.

So! That book on sensing stuff! That seems relevant, let's read that some more.

It goes into further detail about certain techniques one can employ to increase their range, and some exercises to help sort and process all the additional information. On the subject of visions it remains frustratingly vague.

Each time she checks on the landing pad, she'll find the guards vigilant. One time she manages to catch a shuttle arriving. The only person on it is the pilot, and all the offloading seems to be done by droids.

She can practice the techniques about increasing range when she checks on the landing pad, that seems a very efficient use of her time.

... Is anything put onto the shuttle?

That will help her catch the droids! Mechanicals are notoriously difficult for the naive Force-user to sense.

Nothing seems to be. She only gets to see the one shuttle, though. Lights out is announced soon after.

Damn it. Damn it.

She puts her book back and goes to the barracks, cursing her own inability to figure out an escape route today.

Any charming presents at her bunk?

A severed Gran eye-stalk is hiding under her sheets. Posture makes an obscene gesture at her.

She should have killed him. She should have fucking killed him. She had the chance, it was the absolute perfect chance, and she didn't, and now the Gran is either permanently disfigured or, more likely, dead. This is - not, perhaps, her fault, she has no illusions about who's responsible for this, but she definitely could have prevented it if she was a bit less self centered and a bit more aware of what happens when one lets a posturing bully run rampant.

Ugh. Well she can't kill him now, so - how much of a mess has the eye-stalk made? Is there blood all over her sheets?

And, perhaps more importantly, is the Gran present in the barracks?

There is only minor staining from the eye-stalk. It doesn't seem to have had much blood left in it by the time it got to her sheets.

The Gran himself is nowhere to be seen.

She should have killed him.

The eye-stalk has been left abandoned so long that she thinks it's just impossible to get to a medical technician to possibly salvage if the Gran's alive, and this is a Sith academy, so she doubts anyone present's going to care. She runs through potential ways to save it, comes up with none, and accordingly drops it unceremoniously into her trunk.

Upon reflection, she doesn't actually care very much about the minor staining. Off come her boots and outer robe, and into bed she goes.

She's going to have a bit of trouble sleeping, because she's too busy thinking of tidy ways to assassinate someone when directly killing other acolytes isn't technically allowed, but she'll fall asleep eventually anyway.

It's all about timing. There aren't any overseers out in the tombs.

The lights come on early again. Time to go see what the overseer has in store for today.

She is the first one there because she's still pissed and being pissed makes her extremely efficient.

The overseer scowls and doesn't say anything until the rest show up. Posture, then the lovers. Still no sign of the Gran, and the overseer doesn't wait for him.

"You maggots will be having separate trials today. You, Nils," he throws a datapad at Posture, who catches it. "You are going to the library. Read the books listed. Move." Posture leaves.

"You, slave." This is directed at Nariveth. "Weapons training. Second floor practice room. Go."

... Okay? This seems surprisingly non terrible for an assignment from the overseer, she's confused. Is he trying to get - Nils, apparently, is his name - to gain on her in Force powers so he can kill her later? That makes the most sense, but she can get weapon training while working on her strength with the Force, so as long as she doesn't exhaust herself and keeps an eye on the area around her with her sensory abilities, she should be okay. Probably.

She blinks, then goes to the second floor practice room without delaying to grab breakfast, because there could be a Sith teacher involved, and they don't like to be kept waiting.

There aren't any Sith in the practice room when she gets there. There is a flashing terminal to one side of the door. It reads:

{ENTER TRAINING LEVEL - NOVICE -- INTERMEDIATE -- ADVANCED}

... Oh.

Well then.

She's getting breakfast.

The cafeteria is serving grey gloop.

Eh, it's calories. Nom.

And then it's time for training with the computer system.

Is it really just three different modes? No other side buttons for a customizable experience?

Yep. Three sizes fit all.

... She is very apprehensive of this.

But she thinks the overseer hates her enough to say she failed if she turns around without taking any weapons training at all, so...

She draws her sword, and then presses the novice button.

There's a whirr and clank from inside the wall, and a hidden door pops open. One humanoid droid steps out, carrying a single vibrosword. It strikes a guard pose.

It's clear why the Overseer sent her here, she is going to get cut to ribbons.

She - doesn't really have any idea what she's doing. She also strikes what she thinks is a guard pose? Heavily matching the droid's form? ... What the fuck is she doing, this is a terrible teaching method.

When she puts up her sword, the droid moves in to attack. Its swings are slow and broadly telegraphed. It only has about four different cuts in its repertoire, and three ways to parry.

Oh! Oh this isn't completely awful! Okay!

She can work with this!

She practices responding to its strikes before she figures out how to deal with its parries, defense seems important for her to get sorted before she moves on to how to kill people.

This droid is very stupid. It will keep doing the same cuts for as long as she keeps responding to them.

She's okay with that.

Once she's gotten how to defend against these specific cuts, she moves on to trying to figure out how to stab it.

It can bat her blade to the left, it can bat her blade to the right, and it does sort of a swoopy loopy thing when she tries to stab at it.

Oo, swoopy loopy thing, clearly she must figure out how this works and copy it.

She'll briefly be distracted from trying to stab it by trying to copy the swoopy loopy thing.

The swoopy loopy thing is pretty easy to get the hang of, after she sees it a couple times. If she stands just so, she can get the droid to use its stabbing move more often to practice.

She notices this and stands just so to get in her practice, and then once she has gotten the swoopy loopy thing down she goes back to trying to stab it. ... In different ways, to see how it reacts.

It only has the one response. Plus the two slash defenses.

Sigh. She was hoping for a bit more.

Well, that makes it easy to get past its defenses, doesn't it? She figures out a way to do that, and the droid is stabbed.

Bzzzt. Now there is a smoking hole in its chest. The terminal chimes and flashes.

{NOVICE TRAINING COMPLETED}

{ENTER TRAINING LEVEL - NOVICE -- INTERMEDIATE -- ADVANCED}

She'll sit down and have some water before poking the intermediate button, but she does think she wants to poke it. This is actually some very useful knowledge she's getting, she learned a lot from the novice droid, and she is not going to be able to win by shying away from learning things.

After she's caught her breath and had a proper rest, she goes and enters 'intermediate.'

Further whirrs and clanks from inside the wall, and another hidden door pops out. Another droid walks out, of a similar model to the last. It too strikes a guard pose, though somewhat more fluidly.

She matches the guard pose, stretching out with the Force to see if she can figure out where it's going to hit before it hits so she can defend it early, and reflexively checking the hallway for anyone because oops she really should have done that sooner.

The hallway is clear, and it's good that she is using the Force, because this droid is much faster than the last, and harder to read. It has twelve styles of attack, and will mix and match depending on what she seems to do well against.

... Well, she wanted to learn! She's learning now!

She does not immediately get her ass handed to her, which is good, but she clearly has a lot of work to do.

She focuses on defense, again, and how to properly respond to each of the twelve styles of attack. Once she has that, she works on how to defend herself more efficiently, to use up less energy in movement so she's less winded.

She's probably going to get tired before she gets to attacking it.

Yeah, this thing doesn't have an "Off" switch. It just keeps coming.

Even if she darts far enough out of its reach to be out of range of its sword, and drops her guard?

Even so. Sith: Not Known For Rewarding Weakness^tm

Of course not. Why was she expecting this to be reasonable and care about her education and welfare. Her guard goes back up.

That's fine, though. She doesn't have to play fair.

She considers using lightning, but she's pretty sure that is the closest thing she has to literally channeling hatred through her soul. She'll keep it in mind as an option, but she'd rather not. So that means she has to get more creative. Force speed might get her around its defense, and Force strength might let her beat it into submission with raw power, but if either of those mess up she'll likely get sliced open. And she'd prefer to avoid getting hurt if she can manage it, she doesn't know what the medical care's like here. It might be 'rub dirt on it and walk it off' for all she knows. Mind tricking the droid is just - not happening, it's a droid. Maybe she could potentially screw up some of its internal processes, but she has no idea how those work, and would need the Force to check, and that'll take time. And meanwhile, she's getting more and more exhausted.

She keeps her defense up, considering what to do and reviewing all of the things she's learned. ... The book on acrobatics said that she wasn't moving her legs, she was moving the Force that was moving her legs. Which stands to reason that she can potentially move things that aren't hers.

The next time the droid attacks her, she reaches out and tries to throw off its aim.

Its sword slices through the air about half a meter to her left.

Nariveth grins.

She waits for its next slice, throws off its aim even more, and then neatly stabs through it.

Bzzzt. The droid falls over.

{INTERMEDIATE TRAINING COMPLETED}

Danger senses... tingling! Now would be a good time to move forward very quickly!

She doesn't question it. She moves forward very quickly!

Just in time to avoid the sword of the Twi'lek scything through a plane that would have neatly bisected her.

The human girl follows him into the room, closing the door behind her. She draws her weapon as well, and they spread out so as to come at her from both sides, grim expressions on their faces.

What.

What!

"What," she says, stunned, voicing her thoughts.

"If we kill you, the overseer will let us leave," says the girl.

"Bullshit, he's lying," says Nariveth, immediately. But - is he? He might not be, that makes a lot of sense if he wants to get his apparent favored candidate through, just to show up Lord Occlus and go nyeh nyeh, your favored candidate didn't get through.

"Even so," says the Twi'lek, beginning to circle around her. "One less for us to worry about later." The girl nods in tight-lipped agreement.

"Oh, so at the very end you get the joy of killing each other? I'm not the big idiot, I don't want to kill you, I've been looking for a way to get you off of Korriban!"

She keeps her distance, but it's hard to avoid getting boxed in with two opponents.

The Twi'lek growls and moves in to attack. The girl blocks Nariveth's retreat. He's as fast as the last droid, but not quite as imaginative in varying his attacks.

She can keep up with him, she was doing it before with the droid. As long as the girl doesn't join in she can just play the parry game.

"How else do you see this going?! Why do you think he's having you aim for me?! I am not the acolyte he wants me to be! Stop trying to kill me I want to help you!"

"I don't believe you," he grinds out. "Now, Sen!" Here comes the girl, aiming a flurry of strikes at Nariveth's back.

She was expecting this, and Sen gets to have a little problem with her footwork in the realm of 'suddenly having one foot pull forward so she goes falling backwards.'

"Okay," says Nariveth, "then how about this: do you really think you can take me?!"

This prompts a frustrated roar from the Twi'lek, and the strength of his blows greatly increases as he sees Sen fall. She'll be back on her feet in a few seconds, and joining the attack.

Nariveth's already moving away from her, parrying each blow from the Twi'lek as she retreats. Give her time before Sen's properly back in the fight.

She will not kill them, and she will not use lightning, but she does not have to be nice.

The Twi'lek gets his footwork ruined with the power of telekinesis, and then while he's down he gets a well aimed kick to the groin.

He grunts in pain, and stays down for a while. Sen takes his place. She's smaller and not as strong, but much quicker.

Well Nariveth has Force speed, so she can keep up, and then she decides that while she's playing with telekinesis she might as well make Sen's sword go flying out of her hand towards a completely empty corner of the room.

Sen dives after it.

The Twi'lek is getting back on his feet.

And Nariveth takes this chance to sprint to the door and bolt, grabbing her rucksack and sheathing her sword on the way.

"This... isn't... over," gasps out the Twi'lek, but neither follow immediately.

"Trying to help you!" she calls back, but she doesn't stop running.

Well. She probably shouldn't go back to that practice room any time soon. "Weapons training" was probably just a pretext for the overseer to put her alone in a room anyway. What now?

She. She's not really sure, actually, she's going to go fail to catch her breath in a hallway over here and be shocked that some people actually just tried to kill her.

They didn't succeed, at least?

This will definitely put an interesting new wrinkle in her plan to get the out of here, if she can't even talk to them without them trying to murder her. And there's still the part where she hasn't figured out how do that yet.

The plan is looking a bit untenable, it's true. But she's not going to let that stop her.

...

Where is Lord Occlus?

She seems to like the library...

Is Nils also there?

Sensing... no.

But Occlus is!

Okay. She's going there, then.

Occlus is at her usual table.

Deeeep breath.

"My lord?" she asks, wondering if she's gone completely insane or not.

"Yes?"

Occlus doesn't seem terribly upset with being disturbed.

"May I interrupt to ask you several questions?"

"I count two so far, you may as well continue."

... Giggle. "Fair enough."

She sits.

"So, the pair of lovers in my acolyte group tried to kill me. I defeated them pretty handily, but didn't kill them. I don't see why my victories should have to be complete with murder, is there a way to instead get them off of Korriban?"

"Why do you flinch from killing? They attacked you, clearly they have no such regard for your life."

"Yes, but they're desperate. ... And a touch deluded. I have no desire to flinch from killing with my other rival, but with them it's the system we're all stuck in causing them to react... Badly. So I don't see why I shouldn't remove them from it."

"What steps have you taken thus far, to 'remove' them?"

"Information gathering. I tried scouting out the area for the exits, the only landing pad I could find was by the pantry, well guarded and difficult to get to, with the only entrance through the kitchen and then the pantry. Descending from the roof is untenable, I could potentially break a window with the Force but it would probably make a lot of noise and attract a lot of attention, and climbing up to the roof's likely impossible without proper climbing equipment. The guards are too focused on their task to be mind tricked, the non-academy side of the landing pad is open terrain, impossible to sneak through... So, I'm seeing if I have other options available."

"Well thought out. You are serious about this, then." Occlus pauses. "It is not within my authority to directly remove those two from the academy. I could arrange for them to have a serious but non-fatal training accident, and then from the infirmary be moved off-world. But I would need a reason to do so."

She has to put this into terms that make sense to a Sith. ... She can do that.

"If they're dead, they're of no use to anyone. If I get them out of here, they could be of use to me, when they've recovered. Perhaps they wouldn't be - honorable enough to say that they'd owe me a favor, but one thing I am sorely lacking in is connections, and I could certainly use a few." Pause. "... Depending on the definition of serious but non-fatal training accident, I could likely help with that."