The Ghost Ship part 2

It's all starting to make sense now. Kedrihm'Val's people have a lot of experience with Force spirits. He explains how powerful spirits can sometimes project their will onto their environment, wrapping themselves in a pocket realm of their own making. People who stumble across them may find themselves drawn into it, even trapped there. Perhaps this whole place is such a pocket realm. He believes that whatever happened to Dalt down in that lab tore the Force away from the Star Destroyer, so when Vader trapped the thing in the ship, it was left powerless.

Catching on, Zann figures that the visions and places that still have energy might be due to someone with a strong will imprinting their own energy on the barren background. A few people with enough strength might've held on as Force spirits. Hence, all the visions of Dalt and especially Vader. But, Ree wonders, how could a vision from the past possibly see the people observing it from the future? Well--and here's a deeply intimidating thought--Vader may have been so powerful that even the echoes of his presence possess a certain level of self-awareness.

At any rate, it's time to go check those powered-up places. Using her own life force, which tires her, Oola reactivates the databanks of the bridge to locate them. They are, perhaps unsurprisingly, Dalt's and Vader's rooms.

In Vader's room, another vision: Vader, preparing for evacuation, speaks with the Emperor. The Emperor wants him to bring Dalt to him, while Vader argues that he's too dangerous and it would be best to simply kill him. When Palpatine refuses to bend, Vader has no choice but to acquiesce and sign off. Then he throws a tantrum, trashing his rooms with the Force. Calming himself down, he goes down the hall to Dalt's room, where he uses the Force to lock away what's now in Dalt's brain, warding it specifically to prevent the Emperor from ever getting to it.

The group pauses to brainstorm. The Jedi tell what they know of the Rakata, an ancient race--perhaps the most ancient race--who enslaved nearly every sentient species in the galaxy. Strong in the Dark Side, they were known for their Force-compatible technology, a small amount of which is left scattered among the stars, still causing trouble today. Is this what Dalt absorbed: Rakata souls? They might well have done something to protect a small number of the population against their eventual destruction...

But if this is so...could it explain Dalt's often strange behavior and brilliance with interfacing the Force and technology? They'd already theorized that his erratic nature might have stemmed from sub-conscious distraction, some part of him constantly worrying at the block Vader placed on him. Dalt, though, honestly didn't seem like a particularly bad kid in those visions. He was concerned for the welfare of others. And remember his desire for the galaxy: equality in the Force to bring peace: misguided but well-meaning. Perhaps Dalt, left to his own devices, is actually not particularly evil. Yet he's also more brilliant than he seemed in those early visions. Might the Rakata be trying to bend him to their own purposes, subtly influencing him from behind the wall Vader put up?

Deciding that further speculation will get them no further, they decide to head back to the ship. Armed with a better knowledge of what's been going on, the Jedi think they might be able to use the Force to operate a generator and produce power for the Starwind.

When they hit the hold, one more vision strikes: Vader, powering up a TIE fighter with his own life force and throwing the docking bay doors open to escape with Dalt. Kedrihm'Val notices a man watching from the shadows.

As they head toward the Starwind, the men from the Thule ship come out to offer a proposition. Having figured out how some of this works themselves, they offer to work with the Jedi and loan them their life-sucking device. They figure they can drain the power from some poor individual and use it to get a ship moving. Disgusted at the thought, Ree and Zann chase them away.

While Oola starts work on the generator, the others hunker down to rest for a while. Kedrihm'Val wards the Starwind to keep the Thule officers from tampering with it. The officers come over to start trouble, but SARR bluffs them with a self-destruct button he (probably) doesn't have to drive them off.

Ree, meanwhile, meditates...but something goes wrong. She finds herself suddenly in Vader's room on the Star Destroyer, seemingly before anything happened. He wants to know how she got there, and why she's wearing a lightsaber (which he takes from her). She tries not to give much away, but warns him that something bad is about to happen, and that he needs to get down to the lab. At that moment, alarms begin to sound. He leaves, keeping her lightsaber.

The others rouse her out of the...vision or whatever it was. She notices her lightsaber is indeed gone. When the others hear her story, Zann says, "Well, that explains this, then," and hands it back to her. Asked how the heck he got it, he replies that he snatched it from Vader's room years ago, figuring that it was one of his trophies. No, not on this ship. Zann says he was never here.

After they've rested, Oola sends most of the group out to salvage some parts for her.
While they're hunting, Kedrihm'Val spots a little boy, who runs and hides behind a ship when he realizes he's been noticed, but no one else seems to see anything. The ship the child hides behind, however, contains four dead bodies: a man, a woman, and two children. It seems as though the adults killed the children, perhaps out of panic or mercy. It's easy enough to find the necessary parts, but they get sidetracked when they notice something odd further on down.

It's an ancient Jedi ship that still has power. A stasis field protects whatever is inside...which turns out to be an entirely man-like droid and three hibernating Jedi. After satisfied of their nature, the droid is willing enough to talk. It tells them that these Jedi were sent from Ossus to find the ghost ship, which had been devouring ships on the Outer Rim. The ship is a legend in the galaxy, drawn by strong feelings of pain and sorrow to targets that it devours. It has periods of great activity, and then sometimes doesn't show up for years.

While interested to hear what they've learned (and surprisingly well-informed on the subject of Darth Vader; just how old are those prophecies, anyway?), it doesn't want to wake the Jedi since the stasis field is the only thing protecting them from the ghost ship, which given enough time absorbs living things, draining them of life force until even the bodies fade away. They come to an agreement: if the crew is able to get their device up and running, they'll let the droid know so it can wake the Jedi and they can escape together. The droid agrees. Then it asks them to watch over the Jedi for a moment while it takes care of something. Confused but amiable, the crew agrees.

Oola sees a man walk out of the older section of the bay over to the Thule ship, where he proceeds to decimate the ship and the men inside. That finished, he brushes his hands off and walks away again.

The droid returns and thanks the crew for their time. They head back to give Oola the parts, and then decide to see just how far this graveyard of ships goes. Perhaps if they can locate the ship--or whatever--that all this started with, they might be able to find a way to end this mess once and for all.

The second time through, they pay more attention to the periods of the ships. It seems that from the point where Vader trapped the thing in the Star Destroyer up to the last few weeks, there was absolutely no activity. Before that, it was fairly constant, with sparse periods of perhaps a few years between the more active times.

They walk for a good two hours before the Force-users suddenly feel themselves recoiling from what feels like an invisible wall. The others turn around to stare at them in confusion. Shattering it with Force Light, they discover that the force field emanates from a ship that's approximately 40,000 years old. A Chiss man is inside. He's amiable enough in a cool sort of way, and is just as happy to have some activity. He says he set up the force field as an alarm, so that anything that came this way would rouse him from hibernation. He's been sleeping for a long time, since the last time the force field shattered. When they ask what happened, he describes Darth Vader.

The Chiss has a working generator, which they bring along in order to pull information off other ships. They learn that this thing was a Rakata ark ship, meant to bear the souls of the Rakata until they could find people to possess and live again. Nearly at the end of their journey, a journal pad tells them about some strange six-eyed people (noted as particularly arrogant and annoyingly condescending) whom the "black spectre" spoke with, thousands of years ago.

Confused, the Force-users ponder over this for a bit. They know from various experiences that time doesn't seem to be quite stable on this ship. Kedrihm'Val believes it's because they're not really "in the universe" anymore, though he's hard-pressed to explain what he means by that. He thinks that since the Force was torn away from the entire area, it stopped existing on a certain level. That doesn't really help anyone understand, either, so he gives up with, "I don't believe the normal rules necessarily apply here."

Everybody thinks about that for a moment, then they figure, well heck, it's worth a shot. With Zann holding everyone's minds together, Kedrihm'Val tying them to the present, and Ree following Vader's psychic trace (since she saw him last), they try to follow the trail. It spirals them far into the past, where they run into the strange--very strange--six-eyed beings. They're willing enough to talk, congenial in an arrogant way.

They tell about how the Rakatan ship is evil, and wants vengeance upon the galaxy. Long ago, they say, their own ancestors stole the soul component from the ship (the crystal flower) and hid it where no one would ever find it ('never' is a long time). Yes, they admit to speaking to a man in black armor, who would not listen to their warnings about approaching the First Ship. He went in, and when he came back out safely, he would not answer their questions. With a touch of prodding, it transpires that they attempted to bar his way, and he trashed them for it. When the crew suggests that perhaps the First Ship isn't simply hateful and evil, the six-eyed aliens insist almost violently that the Rakata are nothing but evil embodied and nothing good could ever come of them. Zann's skeptical that an entire race of anything could be so consumed with the Dark Side.

Pulling themselves back to their own time, they proceed onward to the First Ship. It comes out to meet them in the form of a man, and offers them seats. The ensuing conversation is odd. They tell it--him--his people were destroyed, and ask what he wants. Thoughtful, he says he has nothing he wants anymore. They point out that a branch of the Rakata species still survives, but he waves that off, scoffing, "Devolved Rakata don't interest me." Out of the blue, he asks if Vader keeps his promises. Uncertain of the point of the question, Zann answers slowly that he has never known him to lie. The First Ship dismisses it, saying, "He didn't really promise; said he doesn't indebt himself." Then he asks what the group will promise--what they'll do if he lets them go. Kedrihm'Val says they'll hunt down the one who destroyed the Rakatans...but Ree mentions that the one responsible for ordering their destruction already died. "Painfully?" asks the Ship in a wistful voice. "Oh, yes."

After a moment of silence, Kedrihm'Val asks if there's even anything to promise anymore. Thinking about it, the Ship says that it spent some time scouring the face of Aldaraan (the place those aliens were originally from). If it has no people left, it supposes it could finish that up...

Another heavy pause, before they answer that Vader destroyed Aldaraan. When the startled Ship asks how, they explain that he blew the whole planet up with a superlaser. The Ship doesn't move for a moment, then exclaims, "Huh, well what do you know." After mulling it over, he shows them a hologram of the Death Star. "Yes, like that." Considering it, the Ship shrugs it off, figuring Vader must've dug up some of the information stored on the eldest ships in the hold. Coming to a decision, he declares that he's going to stop existing, and gives them an hour to clear out.

The crew hightails it, stopping briefly to warn the Jedi droid. When they get back to the Starwind, they find that Oola spent her free time gutting the Thule ship for equipment and information.

The ship dissolves around them, all the ships in the bay cutting loose a short distance from the Alderaan asterioid field. Oola pilots them through the mess, answering the hail from the Alderaanian patrol ships, one of which takes them and the Jedi ship on board and heads back to Coruscant. The others remain behind, collecting the dead ships more or less to clean the place up.