SotB XLVI: Eye of the Storm

*A desperate call. Mysterious disappearances. An ancient evil. Dare you venture into the Eye of the Storm?*

## Agents

### Session 1

* Derra
* Domdees
* Jokan Benn
* R2-M5
* Rogesh Vai
* Shorbecca

### Session 2

* Eve
* Gristle
* Hank
* Pakbatt
* Makren Duvel
* Roncas Starchaser

## Mission Report

*Summary by Ben*

Pakbatt receives a call from Renci Tosh, and is ordered to gather up some agents for an emergency mission. She explains that 3 months ago, a ship had gone missing in a stretch of empty space, and that there have been several attacks reported in the same area. Only one ship thus far has survived the encounters, and its captain has been babbling about some kind of ‘sith storm’ since then. The dangerous zone itself stretches between four different planets, and the latest report of activity dates about 7 months ago. The black box and most of the navigation equipment from the only surviving ship appears to have been melted, and its captain has since been admitted to a mental hospital. Gristle suggests bringing along an unmanned probe to reduce risk. Roncas requests to meet with the surviving captain, and Renci agrees to sneak in two of them.

Gristle and Roncas go to meet Renci at the asylum while the others gather up equipment for the rescue mission. When they’re taken to meet with the captain, he’s in a straight jacket and cowering. The two notice that both of his eyes are blackened, and he begins whispering about shadows and ‘eyes that devour all light.’ Roncas is shaken by the words and immediately leaves the room, but Gristle stays to investigate, Using his medical diagnostic equipment, he finds a small inscription on the captain’s eyeballs, and it appears that some of his bones have been etched with eye-shaped carvings. However, there’s still no sign of an incision. He saves the scans and gets up to leave as the asylum’s doctor enters to tend to the patient, who immediately begins screaming. Gristle moves back to investigate, but there are too many orderlies and nurses in the way. He questions a nurse, but she claims that the behavior is new and that the patient has never reacted to the doctor that way before. Still curious but with time constraints, Gristle goes to leave with Renci and Roncas.

The agents meet back up again aboard the Sunflare and head out to the edge of the danger zone. They skirt around the edge and launch the probe that Renci had acquired for them. Before the probe ventures too far, a bolt flies out of the void ahead and vaporizes it. Immediately after, the crew feels an impact on the Sunflare’s hull and the vessel begins to drag toward the source of that bolt. Hank manages to keep control of the ship and stops the pull after a few meters, but another bolt strikes the ship and he loses control again. The closer they’re drawn, the more points of light they see launching bolts at the Sunflare. The agents begin donning their enviro-suits while Hank, Gristle and Roncas try to resist the attraction. However, the draw is too strong, and the pull soon stops, leaving the Sunflare floating in calm space. The points of light are still around, but there isn’t any apparent danger. Ahead of them, they see a small gray planetoid with trenches carved into its surface and small shapes moving around. Hank turns the ship and brings it in, landing on the planetoid’s surface.

Several figures begin approaching the ship. One is a zygerrian woman, one is a herglic, one is a sullustan in a pilot’s suit, and there’s also a human dressed in smuggler’s attire. They claim to have just crashed, but when asked the date, they give the date from three months ago. A duros wielding a rifle approaches, and the agents recognize him as part of the special forces group they were sent to rescue. He announces that he’s found a cave nearby with inscriptions inside, some of which match the ones Gristle had detected on the captain’s bones. With few other options for escape, the agents agree to come investigate. While heading toward the cave, Gristle, Eve, Makren and Roncas notice that it doesn’t seem naturally formed, but seems more like a carved mouth filled with jagged teeth. Pakbatt notices some inscriptions nearby, and Gristle and Makren go to investigate. Upon touching them, they feel everything else fall away from their peripheral vision, and a cold burning sensation pains their eyes and mouths. They feel as if they’re being swallowed by blackness, and the pain gives way to peace and placidity. Eve and the herglic pull the two away, and they snap back to reality. Gristle concludes that it must be some sort of illusion and warns the others not to touch the inscriptions. Still, the group proceeds inside. Pakbatt sets up a rope guide as the cave slopes down, affording everyone a point to hang onto and a trail to follow in case they need to get back up.

Leading the way, Pakbatt feels a burst of hot air and then hears his father’s voice calling out his name. Pakbatt takes off into the darkness after the calling and soon sees his father standing before him with two metal spikes driven into his eyes and various wounds all over his body. He calls for Pakbatt to give him his eyes, and staggers forward to begin tearing the flesh from the dresselian’s body. After a few moments of agony, he awakens on some stairs further down. Eve, who had taken off after him, literally runs into him, snapping him out of his stupor. Gristle and the others arrive a moment after to investigate, and the doctor finds that there isn’t anything physically wrong with him. Hank can sense an oppressive dark side presence around them, but is able to steel himself before he feels suffocated by it. There’s a whisper in his mind, obviously some sort of dark presence.

Makren feels a glob of ichor fall onto his hand, and it seems to seep through his glove. It opens, almost like an eye, but quickly disappears. The group decides to proceed, and the slope quickly transitions into carved-out stairs. Roncas, holding one of the glow rods, walks through a passageway and suddenly finds himself on Coruscant. He sees a friend from the Imperial Senate and several shadowtroopers nearby with none other than the Emperor himself. His friend points him out and calls him a rebel sympathizer. The Emperor grins and orders the shadowtroopers to grab him while he approaches and commands Roncas to submit before surging his body with force lightning while his friend watches, laughing. He awakens a few moments later with the others around him. Hank suggests that they buddy up, and Gristle offers to tie their belts together with some of the leftover rope from the climbing gear.

Eve, who pairs up with Makren, soon hears something whispered into her mind. She looks to Makren to ask if he’d heard anything, but he clearly hasn’t. In the distance, Eve sees a torchlight and suggests they head to it, but Makren doesn’t see anything. She begins to repeat the words that were whispered to her, and everyone else hears it repeated. She feels as if she’s being pulled out of her body, and can see herself among the others. Her own body sprouts many eyes across its skin, and they’re all trained on ‘her’. At the same time, Gristle feels himself pulled from consciousness by a new vision. He finds himself on Taral V, as if waking up from a terrible dream. Ahead of him, Voolvif, Hank and Shorin are all training with their lightsabers. Outside, Hank sees Gristle’s lapse in consciousness and tries to snap him out of it, but as he touches him, he’s drawn into the vision as well, inhabiting his own body as he trains with Shorin. Gristle approaches them, but notices that their clothing darkens and their eyes start to glow bloody red. Before he can speak to Voolvif, their lightsabers turn red, and Hank sees his own take on an abyssal black coloration. Immediately, they put on wide grins and leap upon Gristle, striking and tearing at him with their hands and sabers, savaging him until he feels as if he’s just hanging on by a thread. Before he blacks out completely, Voolvif stands over him and pronouncing him a failure.

Gristle snaps out of it, and Hank seems to have lived the whole vision through his own eyes as well. The two immediately separate from their adjoining rope. Meanwhile, Eve suffers her own vision of being whipped and tortured in Boto the Hutt’s chambers. Cuts and sores begin to form on her actual skin, and Makren quickly takes her up, trying to snap her out of the illusion. After a few moments, everyone is back to reality, but somewhat worse for wear. Looking up, Hank sees eye-shaped pictographs glowing above them, but they begin to dim as he notices them. A faintly illuminated doorway opens up nearby, and the agents all collect themselves. The people they’d met on the surface are still present, but watching in horror. They decide to head back to the surface to watch the ships, leaving the agents to proceed by themselves. Roncas reviews his cam droid’s footage and finds no sign of the visions on it - just the agents flailing and yelling in pain.

Through the lit door, they find more stairs and begin navigating them. Hank soon hears a small girl crying for help. He goes after after the source and finds a twi’lek girl in rags, sobbing and calling out. She asks Hank for help, claiming that she’s hungry and cold. Hank agrees to help and calls for Gristle, but no one on the outside hears him call. The girl walks toward him and appears to pull his head down and sinks her teeth into his neck to drink his blood. Sated, but still cold, she begins to dig a cavity into his stomach and crawls inside, filling him with the sensation of a spike being driven up his spine. Just as it reaches his skull, he snaps out of it. Pakbatt airs his doubts, but Gristle and Makren are certain that they should proceed.

Continuing on, they find a chamber with four large stone obelisks in its corners. At the center, there’s another obelisk about eight inches long with a wreath of light surrounding it. Roncas, looking through his cam droid, sees a stone altar with nothing on top of it, leading him to believe that the small obelisk in the middle is just an illusion. Eve can feel a beating in the air, as if from a heart. She rushes forward to grab at the obelisk, and just as Hank calls for her to stop, she pulls it away and a piercing scream peals out through the chamber. In the center, a form coalesces into the shape of Hank, the same one from Gristle’s vision. Four tendrils of darkness also materialize nearby, and the agents spring into action. Gristle dives forward with his gauntlets out and grapples Hanks’s doppelganger, locking his arm. One of the tentacles strikes out at Roncas, but misses, and Hank dodges one of the others. Eve waits and times her strikes, baiting out a lash from two of the tendrils before shattering them like glass.

Pakbatt takes aim at one of the tentacles and fires, but narrowly misses, causing a large piece of rock to fall from the ceiling next to Hank’s apparition, forcing it off balance. The tentacle retaliates, striking and wounding Pakbatt, sailing through his flesh like it’s nothing. The illusion of Hank strikes at Gristle with its lightsaber, and the real Hank approaches the altar at the center and strikes it with his lightsaber. Roncas activates the overcharge valve on one of his pistols and fires off a shot at the altar, but Hank gets in the way at the last second. Fortunately, he pulls his lightsaber up and deflects the blast into the altar, shattering it. Gristle dives over the altar just as it shatters, and Makren pries the last piece of it apart with his sword. As soon as it comes apart, the ghostly vision of Hank shatters and explodes, knocking everyone off their feet. Several of them see a vision of twisted, mangled forms playing a soothing melody on flutes, and they see the shape of a many-eyed, many-mouthed being, and one of the eyes opens to stare back at them, matching the one that Makren had seen in the glob of ichor on his wrist earlier. A moment later, Hank and Pakbatt wake the others up, and a call comes in from the sullustan on the surface, who yells about a missile being armed. They all feel the earth shake around them, so they head urgently for the surface. Hank reaches out with the Force as they head out, and finds that the oppressive presence has been relieved. Once back on the surface, they meet with the other survivors, who apparently had a small residual accident from their crash landing. They had all taken individual fighters during their interrupted voyage, and all but one are incapable of flying, so the survivors are loaded onto the Sunflare to escape while the navicomputers of the remaining fighters are wiped.

As they leave the planetoid behind, the agents notice that the storm has subsided and no other abnormalities remain. They go to meet with Renci to turn over the survivors and give back their borrowed enviro-suits.