The Forgotten Apprentice

Galen Marek

There were four different cantinas in the capital of Nal Hutta alone. Two were for the common thugs and rabble. One was an underground bar, hidden from the Hutts, created by escaped slaves working together to free themselves before fleeing into the swamps. The last one was for the richest and most influential beings on Nal Hutta. All members of the Grand Hutt Council went there as did the top gang bosses and cartel leaders. Kly had enough good standing with the Grand Council after doing jobs for them to be allowed to come and go as she pleased. Her contact would lead the one asking questions there.

She sensed whoever it was as soon as they stepped inside. The Force rippled around her at the presence, like a pond’s glassy surface being disrupted by a skipping stone. Kly remained relaxed and calm. She was sitting in a highly visible booth, anything this person tried would have to be done in the open around several very dangerous and influential powers. She took a long drink of her blackroot as she listened to footsteps coming closer.

“You ask dangerous questions, stranger,” she offered, her back still turned to them.

Kly put her fist in one of the prints, studying it. She paused, using the memories that weren’t her own to try and decipher what it was. Uxi something. It was too fuzzy and blended into her own memories for her to pick up anything important. Pity. Kly stood and brushed her armored knees off and looked towards where the tracks were heading. She began to use the Force to dampen her footfalls.

Marek muttered under his breath in return, with a shake of his head, trying to reconcile it. Everything he had heard about ‘Anakin Skywalker’ from Kota and her alike meant little to nothing to him, including the false name. There was no Anakin, if ever he had existed... only Darth Vader, and what he had done to Marek and the rest of the galaxy. Galen had felt pity and sympathy towards his Master, as a slave of the Emperor, one who continued the cycle of abuse and replicated it unto Galen. It was not a sympathy or pity he shared. He took enjoyment knowing the agony Vader endured daily in that suit of his... and he regretted letting Kota talk him out of sparing the Dark Lord of the Sith, back on Kamino. He still wasn’t sure why he had backed down, at the precipice, having him so close to his blades. And after he had thought Vader had killed Juno. The Sith woman would not have hesitated in the slightest, nor backed down... would have put Vader through worse agony... and just now, he could not disagree with her on the matter.

“I’m as paranoid as I need to be. Don’t need to be too paranoid, as the blundering Imperials and Bounty Hunters stupid enough to hunt me have found out the hard way. Doubt I’m worth the credits to them to keep bothering, at this point. And the Inquisitors and Shadow Guard are little more impressive. Haven’t met my match yet, outside Vader and Palpatine... don’t expect to... but I’ll be ready.”

His low, bitter voice spoke back with a dismissive gesture of one of his unignighted Lightsabers, before falling silent again as she requested... lapsing into brooding over the matter, and keeping some of his attention on their surroundings. It would be good to hunt something that wasn’t sentient, for a change. He might have been good at it... but he was tired of killing people for awhile, even if they had it coming to them... as most folk in the galaxy did. He would sooner hunt animals, just now, and learn what, if any, insights into the Force she had to offer. Likely the only knowledge she had was of the Dark Side... but if he needed to learn more of the Light Side, there was always Kota... or another trip back to the swamps of Dagobah, the little green cavern guardian, if need be. He followed her lead for the time being, keeping close, and ready to activate his weapons and utilize the Force, if need be. Still, he hung back a bit, wanting to see and assess more of her skills in action for himself. For more future reference, as she had undoubtedly assessed him.

There were four different cantinas in the capital of Nal Hutta alone. Two were for the common thugs and rabble. One was an underground bar, hidden from the Hutts, created by escaped slaves working together to free themselves before fleeing into the swamps. The last one was for the richest and most influential beings on Nal Hutta. All members of the Grand Hutt Council went there as did the top gang bosses and cartel leaders. Kly had enough good standing with the Grand Council after doing jobs for them to be allowed to come and go as she pleased. Her contact would lead the one asking questions there.

She sensed whoever it was as soon as they stepped inside. The Force rippled around her at the presence, like a pond’s glassy surface being disrupted by a skipping stone. Kly remained relaxed and calm. She was sitting in a highly visible booth, anything this person tried would have to be done in the open around several very dangerous and influential powers. She took a long drink of her blackroot as she listened to footsteps coming closer.

“You ask dangerous questions, stranger,” she offered, her back still turned to them.

“If we’re looking for food, we’ll need to be more cautious with the lightsabers. Turn them to a lower setting so we don’t scorch anything. Don’t want burned viscera in your meat, trust me.” Now that her Firrereo biology wasn’t dumping adrenaline into her veins, her breathing was calm. She walked less like she was stalking something and more like she was simply prowling. 

His remark as they walked made her snort. “Most Sith have that in common. Death feeds that primal part of the mind. The part where emotion and desire and greed are. That’s where we draw most of our power. Our emotions. We all have different ways to draw from it. Skywalker’s was rage, I assume. He was always an angry boy, and Kenobi never learned how to properly tame him. He had anger problems too. Quite the pair, those two. Skywalker went from being a slave of one sort to the slave of another.” She tsked as she stretched her arms up over her head, her mind reaching out for other signs of life.

Marek’s low, cool tone returned stiffly to the Sith woman, jaw tightening further bitterly and dark eyes narrowing within the hood at the memory of Vader she elicited, the sound of his breathing through the respirator. The pain he had inflicted for years upon Galen Marek. The fear, anger and resentment. The desperate desire to please an unpleasable Master he had thought of as a father. Marek refused to call him by the ‘Skywalker’ name. Whoever he had been was dead and gone, had been long before he found Galen Marek. She was both another sort from the Sith he was used to, yet close enough to make him remember the cruel tutelage of Vader and cackling of Palpatine. She seemed to have aspects of both Dark Lords of the Sith... even as she strove to be more like the Dark Side users of old. All the same, despite his feelings of contempt, for the moment he heeded her suggestion for the hunt, unclipping the Lightsabers again, drawing them into his hands with the Force, and taking the time to lower the crystal output setting on them. He kept both hilts in his hands, down at his sides in the reverse grip, not yet igniting them, as he followed along with her, focusing on sensing what she did... and sure enough, picking up on it as they passed through the rain and away from the cavern, the death they had left behind there. The wind making his dark cloak ripple in the breeze behind him as he moved. His eyes in the hood swiveled to what she had found on the ground, tracks leading onward through the thick woods, to whatever prey was out there. He couldn’t deny his own hunger, and there was no sense going back to the ship, or summoning Proxy. He was here to learn and to experience... and about now, could use a good hunt. An outlet. All the same, he looked back her way at the revelation of her diet, a cold smirk touching his lips, uttering a short laugh and shaking his hooded head.

“Would think the Hutts and their ilk would prefer fresh, bloody meat, have plenty of it on their world, imported or otherwise. Then again, those slug gangsters probably hoard it for themselves, or sell it at cutthroat rates. What’s the matter, can’t afford any decent food, spending all your credits on your artifact hobby, and dusty old books and datacrons nobody else is interested in?”

I was really aching to do another Star Wars project, and it seemed like a really great opportunity to revisit something that's incredibly near and dear to my heart.

I think this game was the first game that I ever bought on my PS3, and it will always be canon in my heart 😌 Great story and characters, and fun gameplay.

I think the last time that I drew something TFU-related was all the way back in 2017. I really wanted to apply what I've learned over the past five years into a new piece.

There were four different cantinas in the capital of Nal Hutta alone. Two were for the common thugs and rabble. One was an underground bar, hidden from the Hutts, created by escaped slaves working together to free themselves before fleeing into the swamps. The last one was for the richest and most influential beings on Nal Hutta. All members of the Grand Hutt Council went there as did the top gang bosses and cartel leaders. Kly had enough good standing with the Grand Council after doing jobs for them to be allowed to come and go as she pleased. Her contact would lead the one asking questions there.

She sensed whoever it was as soon as they stepped inside. The Force rippled around her at the presence, like a pond’s glassy surface being disrupted by a skipping stone. Kly remained relaxed and calm. She was sitting in a highly visible booth, anything this person tried would have to be done in the open around several very dangerous and influential powers. She took a long drink of her blackroot as she listened to footsteps coming closer.

“You ask dangerous questions, stranger,” she offered, her back still turned to them.

She deactivated and holstered her weapon, stepping out onto the trail leading to the cave. She didn’t approach it. Instead, she turned her back to it, pretending to be foraging. Minding her own business. It wasn’t long before she sensed eyes on her. Felt beings in the Force slowly circling her. The beings went from the mouth of the cave to the underbrush silently despite their hulking size. She could sense them approaching until she finally felt it. She ducked just as a crudely made spear flew by. She felt the wind on it as it whizzed by until it embedded in a tree.

She activated her saber in a flash and reached out through the Force, gripping one of the beings and dragging them onto her blade. It was much bigger than her, a tower of muscle and sharpened teeth. She let it fall to the ground, spluttering on air that it couldn’t get into its lungs. She flung her blade into the trees next, heard a shriek of pain and then pulled it back with the Force. The sound of something heavy collapsing hit her ears. One came charging, going past her to pull the spear out of the tree trunk before whirling on her. It charged, stone blade pointed for her chest. Kly jumped over the towering creature, landong on her feet with her back turned.

The creature came around again, roaring and alerting everything in the cave. Kly used the Force to stop the spear before it could stab her. She stared down the creature as it growled at her and said something in it’s tongue she assumed was derogatory. She smiled them. A toothy grin with more feral energy than kindness, sympathy or even malice. She used the Force to break its arm and one of its legs, making it hit the ground with a wail of pain before shoving her blade into its head.

He watched as she broke the limbs of the Flesh Raider opponent with the Force, taking her time torturing it, drawing visible amusement from its pain, before executing it… while simultaneously, several of the Flesh Raiders turned from the Sith woman and noticed him standing there nearby in the rain, looking back at them expressionlessly. They began moving towards him, cautiously at first, but getting bolder, anger overtaking them while she spoke to him again. Laying out why he had little choice in the matter… the Flesh Raiders proving it, forcing his hand. Jaw tightening resentfully at her ultimatum, cursing under his breath, he reluctantly activated the blue and red Lightsabers with a hissing of energy, the glow washing over him and combining into a purple light… before he lowered and shifted both into the reverse grip and lunged out at one of the lead charging Flesh Raiders, nimbly dodging its attack, cloak flying about him, cutting off its arm and decapitating it from behind, spinning around in the soil to face the others as it dropped dead behind him. Making the kill quick, unlike the Sith woman. Raising one of the Lightsabers, he focused on another Flesh Raider and pulled it to him effortlessly with the Force… meeting its roars with one of his own and impaling it on both blades, before cutting it in half, both halves dropping down in the soaked dirt with the other one. He fell back into the ever familiar Shien variant of Form V, combining it with Galen Marek’s favored Form VII, Juyo, and rushed towards the cavern, acting on instinct, going on the offensive before the others could, fighting his way through the Flesh Raiders and closer to where the Sith woman fought them.

Killing the rest was child’s play. It gave Kly’s adrenaline time to ease out of her system, but it didn’t make the death and destruction any less violent. It did nothing to quiet the screams of pain and wailing of death and fear. It was like ambrosia to the Sith’s senses, and she fed on it like a creature starved. Once it was said and done, she came out, her eyes once again pale blue and her skin its pale gold hue. She was streaked with blood spatter. But saber kills never left blood. It cauterized wounds instantly. She was calm and collected again, but her breathing was still heavy. She stretched like she’d just woken from a pleasant nap.

“Yeah. Go on then, Sith. Do what your kind does best.”

He watched her stalk off into the cavern... and hand tightening into a fist at his side, he began to pace back and forth in the rain and mud, among the bodies, his clean kills and her messy ones, knowing what would happen next before it did. He soon heard the screams... in his ears, and inside his head. Voices crying out, as she slaughtered and absorbed them. Took her time about it. Elderly, women and children alike. No more mercy for them than she had the slave girl at the Hutt’s palace. Memories of the torrents of screams on the Star Destroyer Galen Marek had brought down returning. He had to remind himself that it was not his hands dirty with the blood of innocents, as it hadn’t been with the slave girl. It was on her. All on her. He had never hurt anyone who hadn’t had it coming to them. And he was here for his own reasons... he would not serve her, any more than he would the Rebel Alliance, Empire or Jedi. She was making these decisions for herself, not for him. He kept Juno in mind, focused on the memory of her visage, her touch and taste... and forced back the screams as best he could, the agony and suffering... until it all fell silent. Sure enough, she soon emerged from the cavern again, and at last he stopped pacing, looking back to her as she drew near... watching the rain washing the blood and gore off her returned to normal visage, the illusion adorned again. Casually holstering her Lightsaber and lecturing him already, as if she had not done what she just had. It occurred to him, not for the first time, that the Sith were as repugnant as the Jedi were inept. Were the two of them really the only options? Again, blood burning in his veins, the temptation came to strangle and break her neck with a Force Choke, to throw her around in the air in front of him... or unleash a torrent of Force Lightning, at least, blast her down into the dirt and turn it to glass around her. Gloved hand tightening even further, he held the anger at bay as best he could, when he finally found the cold voice and words to answer her with, featured hardened at her within his hood.

“I think there’s been quite enough of that for one day. Time we hunted some wildlife, going to need the food. Necessary killing, instead of the twisted pleasure of a self made Sith who worships at the altar of a long dead cult of an Empire. One that died for a good reason, evidently. Let’s move. Can sense some of the local wildlife... animals... which means you can. Try not to torture or murder anymore unarmed elders, women and children along the way. You and Galen Marek’s former Master had more in common than you think.”

There were four different cantinas in the capital of Nal Hutta alone. Two were for the common thugs and rabble. One was an underground bar, hidden from the Hutts, created by escaped slaves working together to free themselves before fleeing into the swamps. The last one was for the richest and most influential beings on Nal Hutta. All members of the Grand Hutt Council went there as did the top gang bosses and cartel leaders. Kly had enough good standing with the Grand Council after doing jobs for them to be allowed to come and go as she pleased. Her contact would lead the one asking questions there.

She sensed whoever it was as soon as they stepped inside. The Force rippled around her at the presence, like a pond’s glassy surface being disrupted by a skipping stone. Kly remained relaxed and calm. She was sitting in a highly visible booth, anything this person tried would have to be done in the open around several very dangerous and influential powers. She took a long drink of her blackroot as she listened to footsteps coming closer.

“You ask dangerous questions, stranger,” she offered, her back still turned to them.

She deactivated and holstered her weapon, stepping out onto the trail leading to the cave. She didn’t approach it. Instead, she turned her back to it, pretending to be foraging. Minding her own business. It wasn’t long before she sensed eyes on her. Felt beings in the Force slowly circling her. The beings went from the mouth of the cave to the underbrush silently despite their hulking size. She could sense them approaching until she finally felt it. She ducked just as a crudely made spear flew by. She felt the wind on it as it whizzed by until it embedded in a tree.

She activated her saber in a flash and reached out through the Force, gripping one of the beings and dragging them onto her blade. It was much bigger than her, a tower of muscle and sharpened teeth. She let it fall to the ground, spluttering on air that it couldn’t get into its lungs. She flung her blade into the trees next, heard a shriek of pain and then pulled it back with the Force. The sound of something heavy collapsing hit her ears. One came charging, going past her to pull the spear out of the tree trunk before whirling on her. It charged, stone blade pointed for her chest. Kly jumped over the towering creature, landong on her feet with her back turned.

The creature came around again, roaring and alerting everything in the cave. Kly used the Force to stop the spear before it could stab her. She stared down the creature as it growled at her and said something in it’s tongue she assumed was derogatory. She smiled them. A toothy grin with more feral energy than kindness, sympathy or even malice. She used the Force to break its arm and one of its legs, making it hit the ground with a wail of pain before shoving her blade into its head.

He watched as she broke the limbs of the Flesh Raider opponent with the Force, taking her time torturing it, drawing visible amusement from its pain, before executing it... while simultaneously, several of the Flesh Raiders turned from the Sith woman and noticed him standing there nearby in the rain, looking back at them expressionlessly. They began moving towards him, cautiously at first, but getting bolder, anger overtaking them while she spoke to him again. Laying out why he had little choice in the matter... the Flesh Raiders proving it, forcing his hand. Jaw tightening resentfully at her ultimatum, cursing under his breath, he reluctantly activated the blue and red Lightsabers with a hissing of energy, the glow washing over him and combining into a purple light... before he lowered and shifted both into the reverse grip and lunged out at one of the lead charging Flesh Raiders, nimbly dodging its attack, cloak flying about him, cutting off its arm and decapitating it from behind, spinning around in the soil to face the others as it dropped dead behind him. Making the kill quick, unlike the Sith woman. Raising one of the Lightsabers, he focused on another Flesh Raider and pulled it to him effortlessly with the Force... meeting its roars with one of his own and impaling it on both blades, before cutting it in half, both halves dropping down in the soaked dirt with the other one. He fell back into the ever familiar Shien variant of Form V, combining it with Galen Marek’s favored Form VII, Juyo, and rushed towards the cavern, acting on instinct, going on the offensive before the others could, fighting his way through the Flesh Raiders and closer to where the Sith woman fought them.