"Excellent, I'm pleased to hear it."

He smiles slightly, and starts in on his dinner at last. It's a pretty excellent dinner.

Oh, yes, right, that dinner thing. Callida can also remember its existence now. She can verify that it's pretty excellent.

"I apologize for not just being able to hand you a dossier on the Sith Empire's structure and culture. It's not the sort of thing we keep around. And there are pieces that I would prefer to personally explain."

"I understand."

"But I'll be happy to answer any questions you have."

"The first question that springs to mind," he says, "is: which are the pieces that you would prefer to personally explain, and why?"

Oh, right to the heart of it, all right then. She grimaces slightly, but not at him.

"Sith social structure - that is, the social structure of the Sith, not of Sith Imperial citizens - is paradoxically highly complicated and very simple. It's brutal, murderous, utterly ruthless and needlessly cruel, and I will not pretend it is otherwise. It's easy to look at the," she motions in the air with her fork vaguely, "the body count of the whole system and write it and everyone part of it off as either psychotic or utterly insane. I think that would be overly hasty.

"From being picked to be a potential Sith, one is put under an immense deal of pressure and stress. They lose a number of options everyone should have afforded to them, including the ability to walk away. Typical Sith can't trust their peers, because their peers would kill them in a heartbeat, to protect themselves from the same or steal their power sources to prevent someone else trying to hurt them. They can't trust their teachers, because to them they're pawns to be used and discarded when appropriate. They can't trust their students, because everything they teach might be turned against them by someone who would gladly kill anyone who has such power over them. They can't trust soldiers or civilians, because a rival Sith can kidnap and torture them for an angle at their heart or pay them outrageous sums of money for an opening at their back or, if they're very unlucky, break into their minds with the Force until the only thing left is the ability to drool. They lose family and friends and lovers because being related to a Sith is dangerous, and when they've lost them they don't try to reach out again because they cannot let themselves be vulnerable.

"They're - we're - people that would ruthlessly kill anyone that gets in the way, because we have to. We're considered monsters, but we're victims, too. And that's important to understand."

"Thank you," says Gregor, "for your perspective, and for your honesty. Both are appreciated."

"You're welcome."

She spears a bit of food with her fork and eats it pensively. Then:

"Also we have slavery, and it's terrible," she says, almost nonchalant.

"An accurate and eloquent summary," agrees Callida.

At that, he smiles slightly.

She smiles back.

"Do you want to get all important conversational pieces out of the way now, or spread them out a bit? Because I have more."

"I'd rather you proceed at the pace you find comfortable, but if that's an offer, I'm all ears."

"The hyperdrives are most likely permanently broken, because hyperspace doesn't seem to exist, here. The associated hyperwave communication with it."

"Yes, we'd suspected something along those lines might be at work. Still disheartening news, all in all."

"Yes. I suppose it was obvious that they were broken by how I didn't say, 'It's a pleasure to meet you all, but we'll see you in three months after we've found a deserted habitable planet to claim as our own.'"

"Just a little, yes."

"It's a pity, too, we have the colonization equipment and everything."

"Unfortunately I don't have any habitable planets going spare."

"I imagine not. I hear those are hard to come by here."

"Yes. And the hyperdrive would have represented an unparalleled opportunity to change that. Ah well."

"Yes. I do have people trying to figure out what exactly happened to get us here. We're still not sure. It might have been one way."

"That... could be unfortunate."

"Could be," she wryly agrees. "I have hopes for being able to contact my teacher, however. And maybe she can figure out what happened from her end."