Darth Bane's Training

After a busy few months, Darth Bane had returned to the Imperial flagship Imperator. Since his return, he'd dispatched his apprentice to attend to a crisis in the Sluis Sector, ordered his perennial subordinate Seraph to an emergency command on Vjun, and sent the ancient interrogator Koth back to his hole on the edge of the Rim. He was glad to find that things were suddenly quiet; he was ready to lock himself away for a week or two, to contemplate what had come, or what would -- he would find that to which the Force guided him.

The first step, he knew, was to center himself, and as he was meditating on the Imperator and the Force energies that flowed through it, he sought to forge a closer understanding with the patterns that moved through the vessel and to more closely align his own energies to those he sensed.

He sat on the floor of his small personal quarters, isolated at the end of an unassigned, darkened row of crew cabins, a place rarely visited save by the Grand Inquisitor and his servants. He stretched for a few minutes, working out the kinks that his activity had put into his aging body. When his back was straight and his neck relaxed, he began to concentrate on his breathing, taking great care in metering it out exactly, on breathing in a constant, flowing rhythm. He let each breath linger a bit longer in his lungs, took a little more time expelling the air before slowly inhaling more.

The close focus, the concentration, allowed him to easily focus himself and concentrate upon the eyes in his mind. He opened those eyes now, letting his body feel the radiating waves of energy that lapped against his own, casting his mind out upon the Force, listening to its flow. He took several minutes examining the room, feeling the dull echoing of his previous time here, the far smaller traces of Koth and Silus overshadowed by his stronger presence, but still there to be detected. Each had a different pattern, a different feel, distinguishing the one who had left it. Koth's presence was full of hatred, hatred for who he was and what he'd become, hatred for all that surrounded him. Silus's was more like an anger that hungered, that lusted for death and the power of corruption.

But mostly, there was his own pattern. He could feel the imprint of the cold fire of his will, could feel the vibrations left as he touched mental fingers to the pulses of energy and power that flowed through the ship, sustained and shaped by the hundreds of thousands of living beings aboard. It was with that thought that his senses began to search further outward, began to retreat from his own sanctuary to touch more and more of the massive vessel that surrounded it.

He let his senses expand slowly, reaching out a few corridors, up and down a deck, tracing out the emotional stains left by the occasional being whose business brought it close to the isolated block of rooms. He opened himself up further, taking in the glow of life that was the flag region of the crew quarters. His senses began to focus outward more quickly, soon growing beyond the ship's engineering decks, into the command structure, down into the hangar bays, even out into the dead blackness, the void of life that was the surrounding space.

He felt the darkness that flowed hidden within the pulsing lives that made up the ship's crew. He could sense other areas that were concentrations of Dark Side energies. The were brutal, cruel signatures that he equated with the personal quarters of Lord Rak Orshana, the Imperial Grand Executor; in the commander's war rooms, he could feel the brooding genius, the perfect shadow that was the soul of the Master, the Dark Side's champion.

But mostly, there was simply the massive glow, light and dark, strong and soft, that was inevitably created by the more than one quarter million beings on the command ship. As he took in the whole of the ship's life pattern, Darth Bane basked in it, letting himself feel it, taste it, as he concentrated himself completely upon it. He could feel individual points of anger, moments of pleasure, a multitude of pulses all beating in a complex and seemingly chaotic pattern.

But Darth Bane knew better. There was no chaos; there was order. The pattern's order was simply hidden in its complexity. He would have to contemplate it for many more days before he truly understood its depth. For the moment, he contented himself to simply concentrate upon it, to sense it in a raw and visceral fashion, that he might be able to touch it more closely in the future. He let his will focus upon the rhythms and tried to connect himself to them, using his Force-heightened control over his body's internal clocks to try to synchronize himself with the vibrant, glowing pulse of the ship's varied Force patterns.

He continued this meditation for as long as he could manage, breaking ten hours before his mind, exhausted, demanded rest. He ate a small fare, then slept, relaxing his will that he might continue his examination of the ship the next day.The next day, after an hour spent stretching his body and focusing his mind, and another meditating through exercises in several lightsaber forms, Darth Bane returned to the mat on the floor of his quarters. He spent close to half of another hour concentrating on his breathing, taking control of his body's rhythm, allowing it to settle to the slow, constant pulse of the Force energies he'd contemplated the day before. The ambient Force tended toward the Dark, and Darth Bane had sensed a hint of anger and frustration inside it; it was the perfect combination for him to access and contemplate.

Focused and passive, his tight control over his own mind, born of his unyielding discipline, allowed his senses to open even more fully than they had the day before. Coupled with the insights of his previous meditations, he was thus able to read the Forcescape far more intimately, to discern even more about the intricate twists and nuances within the pattern of life energies that flowed through the many kilometers of steel that was the Imperator.

As always, his mind was drawn first to the strong concentrations of Dark Side energies on several of the ship's levels. There was the one in which he was currently located, his makeshift quarters, where his personal meditations on Rage had cloaked the entire deck in a familiar darkness, one that Darth Bane and those who knew him well could easily detect as the imprint of his own consciousness.

Beyond that, there was the similarly spartan quarters of the Grand Executor, Lord Orshana. There was a more visceral blackness here, a hungrier and more dangerous rage, although one no more terrifying than the cold and calculating stain of Darth Bane's meditations. There were others as well, in other parts of the ship, traces left by the grandmasters' disciples and apprentices. Darth Bane could detect the recent presence of Koth, the quiet buzz of Kashti Uline, and tucked away in an unnoticed corner of the command deck, the cruel menace that was Skullseer.

All of these, though, were dwarfed by the central mind of the ship, the darkest and most vast blackness of them all. Just below the command deck, Darth Bane sensed the black hole of power that was the Dark Side's Champion. Both of them had changed over the years, but there was no denying the constant link between Darth Bane's presence and that of Lord Solence. The Dark Lord was everpresent in the mind of the Grand Inquisitor; he was the fount of Darth Bane's powers, and it was thus by his master's terrible will that Darth Bane had been loosed upon the Force at all.

When these more potent concentrations of energy had been recognized and sensed, Darth Bane was able to turn his mind's eye more fully to the softer glow of non-sensitive life that traced its way through the Imperator's bulkheads like the fiery blood in the veins and arteries of some primitive's god of war and destruction. Concentrating his mind fully upon the crew, upon their life energies and the collective imprint of their quarter-million minds upon the patterns that surrounded him, the webs that connected him to each and every one of them.

He sensed a dull anger, smoldering like a buried coal, burning inside the hearts of the crew. It was an anger created, at its core, by Ly'can Stormkiller, the man who had usurped the Second Imperium from its rightful sovereign, casting aside the military in favor of his support base in Sector Command and its defensive fleets. It had been blooded in the Loyalist victory at Torchin, given renewed purpose, cultivated for further victories as the Shadow Imperium prepared to sweep away the dessicated corpse of the Empire.

There was frustration as well, the frustration of a crew forced away from their homes, given the label of traitor and insurrectionist. The fleet's isolation wore on them, fed nervous energy that bubbled constantly, a quiet danger multiplied by the flames of the very anger that the commanders had sought to stoke. The Empire needed another victory, one of a greater scale than those afforded by the exploits of the Intelligence elite that Darth Bane oversaw.

As he contemplated the crew and the cadre of masters who oversaw it and gave it direction, he sensed that there was something he was missing, some presence unfelt. It spoke to him of the answer to an unasked question. He continued to cast his mind over the crew, concentrating anew in an attempt to identify the source of the nagging thought, but for today at least, it would not come.

He contemplated this question for several hours as he sensed the ambient Force; finally, he rested, returning to physical exercise with his twin lightsabers before retiring for the evening. He would think of the question more fully the next day, he decided.

The next morning, following his usual exercises and meditations, Darth Bane returned to his mat to contemplate the question of the day before. He focused his will and concentrated once more upon the patterns of the Force that flowed through and swirled around the ship, reacting to every mind and every thought inside the massive warship.

His mind was, as always, drawn first, conducted by the impact of his own mind, to the inky power of Lord Solence's meditations. The strongest influence, like a weight at the center of a tightly-stretched sheet of rubber, it was the starting point from which Darth Bane connected himself to all the other presences on board the ship. But while he would combine his ability to sense the Force itself with the technique of sensing a single individual within it when touching other minds, he never sought to connect himself directly to Lord Solence. In the case of his master, he restricted himself to sensing the Force that surrounded him, the waves of energy that he put out, sensing him at the edges only up to where the Unifying Force ended and Lord Solence's presence began.

He was able to connect himself more fully to his colleague, Lord Orshana. It was a passive connection, one designed to not provoke a sense of attack or a need for defense in the mind of the other master -- simply a passing touch that informed the Grand Executor of Darth Bane's meditations. Darth Bane contemplated the familiarity of the Grand Executor. There was some piece of the puzzle inside it, although the answer was not in Rak himself. Darth Bane cast his senses out further, searching for his disciples.

There were others on board as well, younger Executors and even new initiates of the Inquisitorius, that Darth Bane had not met, but these were like background noise compared to the familiar presences that were Darth Bane's High Inquisitors. The first to whom his mind was drawn was Skullseer, the quiet presence who served the Grand Inquisitor in an unknown role. Always present but rarely seen, he was a relic of the early days of Lorne Ramiir, one of the first of the Supreme Commander's new breed of personally loyal Inquisitors unbound by devotion to Stormkiller.

Absent was Seraph, another of Ramiir's first disciples, but Darth Bane could sense the presence of another long-time member of the Inquisition's inner circle, Marcus Lucius Nero, the scarred officer was one of the Ubiqtorate's seniormost generals. Also present was a younger inductee into the halls of the Inquisition's inner mysteries, Kashti Uline. All were familiar and immediately identifiable to the Grand Inquisitor, and he was able to quietly wrap his mind around each of them in a cruder, less potent, although similar, link to that between himself and his own master.

There was another absent presence, one that had been opened to Darth Bane for the months since his awakening on Torchin. The Grand Inquisitor's apprentice, Silus. When he contemplated his student's mind and its absence, the sense of familiarity and the nature of the unasked question returned to his mind. Part of his answer began to take shape.

He focused his mind more tightly, clamped down on his thoughts with his honed, razor-sharp inner control. Anchoring himself to the familiar and powerful glow of the Imperator, Darth Bane cast his mind outward, beyond the fleet, into deep space beyond. They were in the Rim, not too distant from Darth Bane's goal: Chazwa. Here, just at the edge of his senses, he felt his mind briefly brush against Silus's presence. He could sense the victory that had been reported some hours earlier, felt his apprentice's consciousness slowly begin to move toward the hidden fleet, starting the final, homeward leg of his journey, his second task complete.

The effort, the strain of pushing his senses out so far, finally overwhelmed him, and he allowed his mind to slowly retreat, rushing back across the stars to return to the Imperial fleet. He relaxed, released the tension that had taken hold of his body in his intense concentration, and returned to focusing on his breathing. After half an hour, he arose and returned to his bed, exhausted by the process of pushing himself so far outside his own body.


Returning again to his meditation mat, Darth Bane returned his thoughts to the crew and the Force that connected them all together the next day. He sought deeper understanding of the individual presences that composed the great, vast, organic being that was the Empire; in gaining such understanding, he would find insight into how best to serve it in his appointed role.

Again, he touched the Force, sensing its ebb and flow, feeling the presence of his master, of his colleague, of his disciples. From there, he defocused from these familiar presences and again looked broadly at the collective impact of the crew. He touched the slow and steady pulse of the crew's biorhythm, bathed his eyes in the lambent light that pulsed in time. There were concentrations of life energies in some parts of the ship, and others were identifiable by the tenseness and anxiety of the crew members inhabiting them.

The vast city of crew quarters were like the beating heart of the ship's sentient life, the source from which the individual crewers issued forth into the cavernous vessel and to which they returned when their force was spent. The flow of minds could be followed into the Imperator's belly, deep in the Engineering decks; further forward, into the busy hangar bays, buzzing with activity; branching out forward to vigilant weapon crews that dotted the warship's superstructure; and up to the ship's brain, the command center from which the electronic orders were issued like nerve impulses to a predator's muscles.

He followed the artery leading upward, into the command structure; it was already easy for him to find due to Skullseer's hovering presence, but his renewed focus on the crew saw it exposed as one of the most vibrantly alive parts of the ship, the tense center where the anxiety of war was most fully felt. He searched out among the many presences there for the ship's commander, a man he'd met only a few times. It was hard to locate the more unfamiliar presence, but after scanning the Force for several minutes, he finally located it and locked his mind onto it.

The man's mind was occupied with by a drill. Much of the crew was young, fresh volunteers and conscripts to replace the Loyalists' losses during Stormkiller's treacherous assault on Torchin. The usurper had paid a heavy price, but the Loyalists had paid as well, and they were hard-pressed to replace their losses. His was a concise and ordered mind, one with a penchant for brilliant tactical thought, and thus simultaneously harder to penetrate. The structure that gave his tactics life also formed a wall-like protection, a framework that had to be understood to be surmounted.

Such a mind, when still somewhat unfamiliar, required the utmost concentration to fully contemplate, and Darth Bane refocused himself now, studying the captain's presence closely, sensing the unique patterns that created his consciousness as fully as he could. Thus centered, there were few minds that could resist Darth Bane's will, and he now inspected every recess and crag in the captain's mind. There were a few interesting tidbits stored in his recent memory, but for the most part, he sensed only the droning monotony of life aboard a ship drifting through deep space.

He could feel the beginnings of further illumination, but he experienced no sudden epiphany. Instead, he continued to practice his senses, localizing and studying the various presences that he had previously identified as junior members of the Empire's orders of Dark Jedi. He found and briefly examined two potential initiates for the Inquisition, quietly inspecting their minds and thoughts without revealing his presence to them. He also contemplated a more alien mind, with a brutal and fierce swirl of emotions that easily identified him as one of Lord Orshana's disciples.

There were a multitude of minds on the ship, a vast assemblage of thoughts and emotions. First inspected, they were only a soft glow, dim compared to the powerful presences of the Empire's leaders scattered throughout the ship. But looking more closely, inspecting them more thoroughly, they proved a veritable cacophony of competing hopes, desires, fears, and hatreds.

That, then, was another part of his answer. He continued to watch the crew, now shielding his mind from the steady pounding of its pulse to which his close alignment with the ship's energies exposed him. Slowly, he defocused his mind, allowing the patterns to lose their potency, the glow to fade, and gradually returned to his own body. He spent several hours lost in thought, then several more in intense physical exercise with his lightsabers, before again succumbing to sleep, where his dreams were stranger than usual.



The next day, after his morning rituals, Darth Bane ventured out for more than food or the refresher for the first time since he'd sequestered himself. From his perch at the top levels of the ship's vast crew section, he followed the flow of life, meandering across the ship, tucked away in the corners of the decks as he moved.

He kept to the shadows, observing rather than letting himself be seen. He made use of several of his disciplines, from enhancing his own perception to dimming the senses of those around him. As he moved, he kept his senses aware, focused outward, sensing the patterns that came near his own, evaluating them closely one by one as he slowly made his way deeper into the ship.

It was his Life Detection power, which he used as best he could to catalogue the crewers (or at least generalities about them, such as "engineer" or "security"), that finally provided him his answer, as he had suspected the day before, but the entire day was instructive, as he made full use of his varied abilities to traverse the ley lines of Force energy, crisscrossing his way across the ship and eventually finding himself deep in the Engineering section.

Darth Bane made use of a variety of sensory-oriented techniques during these instructive periods. Sometimes, he simply kept to Life Detection and Dim Other's Senses, but he found opportunities to examine individuals more closely with his Life Sense ability, or to connect to their minds via Receptive Telepathy. He sensed several health problems as the crewers in question contemplated the issue, studying each's Force signature closely in turn. He traced his mind across several disparate engineers and techs involved in a petty grudge; finding both of the main subjects to be sniveling cowards, Darth Bane made mental note of their names to be sure they were transferred off the flagship and out to the fringe of the Imperial arc. The far end of the Minos Cluster made for a perfect dumping ground.

Finally, though, as he came into contact with more and more minds, as the steady flow of beings continued to pass into and out of his close-range senses, he decided quite simply that there was too much commotion, too much turbulence in the Force, too many beings in close proximity for Silus's final preparations. They would need to travel elsewhere, off the Imperator and away from the fleet, for his apprentice still had much to learn before his third task.

He continued his silent vigil as he began to make his way out of Engineering; as he did, one of his subjects caught his interest. He was a young tech; his Force pattern was most like those Darth Bane had noted to be new recruits from the period of time shortly before Torchin, who'd now been blooded with the fleet and knew their business. What caught Darth Bane's eye was a flare of anger, which he connected back to the grudge he'd sensed previously. The bored, misdirected, frustrated anger of the crew was destructive. And it certainly wasn't conducive to creating the atmosphere he needed.

He headed back to his quarters. Contemplating the Force's pulse, he decided the disjointed pattern of anger had settled somewhat, had faded into a dull background noise. He had most of his answer, but details remained to be settled. He went through his exercises, centering his mind, then once more focused intently and cast his mind out toward his apprentice. Once more, he sensed Silus; the Inquisitor was making his way across deep space, making his way back to his master's side. The shorter distance made it easier to reach him, but even so, Darth Bane felt as though his powers might be growing with the constant use.

It would take his student several days still to make it back to the fleet. The Grand Inquisitor decided to continue his meditations until Silus was back -- once he'd finished laying his plans.

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